Re: Web Forms: Usability and Accessibility Question.

> Can you please say more about this because by and large I just don't think
> there is a lot of usability applied to most forms.  There are so many mixed
> metaphors, many of the behaviours we see on the web show a lack of

Yes.  If you give a web 'designer' a brief to design a form, this is
likely what you will get; they like playing with obscure metaphors.
However, if you go to the person who commissioned the design (but before
it goes live) you can probably convince them that putting commonly
used fields first is something they should instruct the designer to do,
but you will probably have to threaten them with legislation for them
to provide accessible pages.

The difference is that usability is perceived as increasing the number
of purchases by free spending customers, whereas accessibility is 
considered an expensive feature for an unproductive part of the market.

> understanding of basic interface guidelines for software design.  So which
> conflicting usability requirements are you referring too?

The conflict is that there may be natural groupings or orderings, e.g. it
makes sense to put landline and mobile phone numbers together, even if
only the landline number is mandatory.

Received on Wednesday, 4 February 2004 17:57:29 UTC