RE: Cognition Simulation

On Fri, 24 Aug 2001, Charles F. Munat wrote:

  A better test would be to simply ask "what is the above guideline telling
  you to do?" Leave the answer blank. At the bottom, you can provide the
  actual text of the guideline so people can check their answers.

chaals: Yes, good idea.

Cmunat:
  The point is, illustrations can confuse the issue as easily as they can
  clarify it. Adding the audio equivalent is a much better idea. I would guess
  that all hearing, English-speaking readers would get the question right
  after hearing the audio equivalent (assuming they could make out Charles'
  funny accent).

Chaals: Yes, I agree with this. One reason for adding the audio equivalent,
and why I believe that we should discuss non-text equivalents, rather than
just images.

Cmunat:
  Having a checkpoint about adding illustrations makes little sense to me
  unless there is also a checkpoint saying that we should make illustrations
  (and other "text equivalent content") clear and simple. Why is it only text
  that needs to be clear and simple?

chaals:
Indeed it is not just text that needs to be clear and simple. I have argued
before (and will again) that we need to have more information on how to make
graphics accessible (having good contrast in colours is a start, but only a
start).

I agree that we need to be careful about how much importance we attach to a
couple of rough-draft tests - they can give us some ideas, but could be badly
designed for any number of reasons. However, we need to start somewhere, and
this test, like Kynn's test, can give us some data that we can think about
how to use. Obviously, more testing, and carefully designed testing, is
important.

Cheers

Charles McCN

Received on Friday, 24 August 2001 19:18:03 UTC