- From: Patrick Lauke <P.H.Lauke@salford.ac.uk>
- Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 14:56:28 -0000
- To: <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
> From: Léonie Watson [...] > Not all visually impaired people have always been that way. An > appropriate alternate description of a decorative image can > conjur up a > picture as desireable [...] > If the image of the house serves no purpose, then it > probably shouldn't > be there. If it serves the purpose of adding colour and vivacity to a > document, then there is absolutely no reason why both sighted and non > sighted users shouldn't participate in that emotive aspect. Taking this to the extreme, though, visually impaired users may then also want to know what typeface is used for headings, body copy, etc, what colours, what patterns, what type of layout, etc Again, the question here really is: what purpose do all the decorations and other visual cues have? Is it really that relevant to a blind user to know that the typeface used is Helvetica Neue rather than Cooper Black, that it's all soft pastels rather than day-glo primary colours, if the relevant associations and emotional responses that these visual cues were used for are also present, in different form, in other parts of the page/site? Debatable, and it would strongly depend on exploring *why* users are coming to a particular site (compare a bank website versus an art site, for instance). Anyway, my GBP0.02 Patrick ________________________________ Patrick H. Lauke Webmaster / University of Salford http://www.salford.ac.uk
Received on Tuesday, 21 December 2004 14:59:34 UTC