Re: A few comments on NIDRR's Abledata website

I have to admit, I agree with Marjolein that this is not a very impressive
effort, from my reading of a handful of pages on the site.

Although I am sighted, I tend to use a text-only browser where possible to
avoid problems with poorly specified fonts and backgrounds, and because it si
more convenient.

So I looked through both versions using the same browser. The differences I
noted were as follows:

in the low-graphics version there are non-link characters separating links on
the same line.

in the high-graphics version there is not appropriate alt text for the images
used as bullets.

I don't have many fonts on my machine, so I tend to have readable text all
the time but I note Marjolein's comments.

Which hardly seems justification for two separate pages so as to help people
with little ability to use graphics. In fact, with a little thoughtful use of
style sheets they could have significantly reduced bandwidth requirements on
the high-graphics version.

Charles McCN

On Sat, 19 Feb 2000, Marjolein Katsma wrote:

  I'll politely disagree here...
  
  At 09:43 2000-02-19 -0800, you wrote:
  >Hi,
  >
  >NIDRR's Abledata website is an excellent example of accomodating a wide
  >range of users' preferences.  For people who have the band-width
  >and prefer very visually interesting presentation with rich graphics
  >and features using Java, there is one set of pages.
[snip]  
  >I have to admit I'm impressed with the thought that went into designing
  >this web site.
MK:  
  Um - I'm not impressed at all. A really good design for the content (at least the content I've seen) would be accessible to all and not even necessitate two versions.

Received on Sunday, 20 February 2000 12:33:12 UTC