- From: Paul Davis <paul@ten-20.com>
- Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 23:19:34 -0000
- To: <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>, "Alexander Johannesen" <alex@shelter.nu>
All comments accepted and considered valid points. .................however, the tendency is for web designers and computer types to forget that if you talk to Joe Public about browsers and settings, the general reaction is a blank expression. Yet if you ask if they surf the internet, the general answer "yes, quite often " But to those people it is not a browser they use, it is "the internet" ask how, all too often you will hear " I click on the big blue E symbol" (which incidently sums up who has the market place). generally you will not hear " I open my browser" We all are aware of netscape, opera, linux and apple but over 95% of Joe Public are not, or it is a lost science to them. This is not condescending.... this is fact. I once gave a talk on who within the work place should design a web site, there were obviously a majority of IT departments and computer people present in the audience. So you can imagine the sharp intake of breath when I told them the last job they should have was designing their company's web site. I have said this before and will no doubt say again. IT departments should be given parameters to work within and graphic designers chained to desks and told what is required of them. Designing a web site and how it should work and what it should do, should be left to the people who know people, not people who know computers. The number one reason for anyone to access the internet is to gain information, and secondly for personal research of market places of interest to that surfing individual. What we are prepared to do with our computer or what we "experts" are able to do with our computer is academic. Err....definition Ex is a has been and a spurt is a drip under pressure. It is what Joe Public does that must interest us. Our objective is easy accessibility, not I find it easy, so do all my colleagues. This does not make our work invalid, all experience and research is very important to move forward. To sum up may I point out NASA spent a $million to design a ball point pen that would work upside down and in weightless conditions, on a space exchange one Russian expert was asked how they solved the problem, he shrugged, licked the end of his pencil and carried on doing the crossword. smiles Paul Davis still sponsored by no one!!
Received on Wednesday, 5 November 2003 18:23:10 UTC