Re: QED & Marshall McLuhan

Jonathan,

I looked at your site and couldn't make any sense of it, but I'm a
very textual person (Lynx is my browser of choice).

For contrast, my officemate is semi-agraphic; he usually only looks at
the images on a page and skips past the text, leading to comprehension
problems.  He doesn't understand your site either.

I don't think that the messages you forwarded were unsympathetic; I
think they were trying to offer constructive criticism.

It's possible that my officemate and I have too many preconceptions
from the world of words.  But I think that trying to address only the
completely and totally illiterate is both missing the important realm
of the semiliterate, and not providing a browsing path from illiteracy
to to literacy.  In addition, the rapid motion of the site is
confusing; if the user's illiteracy is due in part to a comprehension
problem, then the rapid speed is going to confuse them.

I find the effort to address comprehension of the Web by illiterates
to be an interesting and worthwhile one, but one that's much, much
harder than accessibility of the Web by the blind, deaf, or
motion-impaired.  Please don't quit, but don't assume that everyone
who doesn't fall in love with your site is hostile to your cause.

-Chris
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Received on Monday, 7 June 1999 16:30:07 UTC