Attractiveness and v.2

Greetings,

The first sentence in the Introduction of the v.2 draft states:

"This document outlines design principles for usable, attractive, and
accessible Web sites."

I believe that this is a mistake (and also that it is advocacy again
creeping in to a specification).

Accessibility and usability are what we are after. They are -- to some
extent -- measurable, and the benefits are tangible. They're also the
purpose of this effort.

Attractiveness is a subjective, immeasurable quality. It has nothing to do
with accessibility or usability. More importantly, we aren't providing
general design recommendations having to do with aesthetics.

So why is it there? My guess is because we're all tired of hearing people
say that accessible sites are ugly. But again, this is advocacy, and it is
also putting us on the defensive. I am in favor of removing all references
to attractiveness from the WCAG 2.

Chas. Munat

Received on Thursday, 16 August 2001 15:56:16 UTC