Re: CSS Options

Hi, Chuck
I may have missed something, but I didn't see your explanation for not
having a separate box for an accessibility style sheet.
Could you tell why you believe there shouldn't be a separate place
for an accessibility style sheet?  Perhaps, you're assuming that disabled
users won't want to make some minor adjustments to the accessibility
style sheets to fit their own preferences?

As I mentioned on the conference call, I've done a fair amount of
work with user configuration issues.  My goal is in general to
give as much user satisfaction as possible.  Often I found that
users like the flexibility to tweak things to get it how they want it.
This makes users feel that the application is adjusting to them rather
than they're adjusting to the application.

The other important aspect is to let users tweak without learning
a lot of additional information or being exposed to the possibility
of making unexpected mistakes which they can't figure out how to fix.
Forcing them to modify accessibility style sheets will open the
possibility of customer support problems either for Microsoft or
the provider of the accessibility software when they try to
help users find their mistakes.  Trust me.  I've been down
this road a number of times.  Customer support people will prefer
it this way.


Scott


PS  There's a phrase in the user interface world that user-friendly
is programmer-hostile.



> You're asking for accessibility-specific UI for a general problem.  I do not
> want to endorse a separate box for an "accessibility style sheet."
> 
> If we were going to provide pre-defined style sheets for accessibility
> considerations, we would populate a folder on the users machine.
> 
> >From there, when you specify a style-sheet, you can "Browse..." and the
> style sheet folder appears.  Whatever style sheets that are installed are
> then listed.
> 
> A screen reader will then have a specific place, on a per-user basis, to put
> their own style-sheets in.  IE might ship some as part of the default
> browser and ship others as a Power Pack, and/or some sort of Accessibility
> Pack.
> 
> So the UI would be:
> 
> Check box - "Enable Cascading Style Sheets to format web pages"
> Edit box - "File name of users style sheet"
> Button - "Browse..." (opens up File Open dialog to users CSS location and
> when closed puts the selected file into the edit box)
> 
> -Chuck
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Scott Luebking [mailto:phoenixl@netcom.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, March 10, 1998 1:21 PM
> To: w3c-wai-ui@w3.org
> Subject: CSS options
> 
> 
> Hi,
> Here's what my suggestion for the CSS options.
> 
>     *  Ignore cascading style sheets
> 
>     *  Use cascading style sheets
> 
> 	                                                      +------------+
> 	    Optional accessibility cascading style sheet      |            |
> 	                                                      +------------+
> 
> 	                                                      +------------+
> 	    Optional user's personal cascading style sheet    |            |
> 	                                                      +------------+
> 
> There are two radio buttons for the cascading style style sheets,
> The first says ignore style sheets while the second says to use
> the style sheets.  (The default would be to use the cascading style
> sheets.)  Under the second button and indented are two file name boxes.
> The first file field specifiecs an optional accessibility CSS file name.
> The second file field specifies an optional user's personal CSS file.
> 
> Providing for a separate accessibility CSS file in addition to the
> user's personal CSS gives the disabled user the option of overriding
> various aspects of the accessibility CSS file to more easily
> tailor it to his/her needs without needing to duplicate or
> modify the accessibility CSS file.
> 
> What do people think of this approach?
> 
> Scott
> 
> 
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> >From chuckop@MICROSOFT.com  Tue Mar 10 19:40:20 1998
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> From: "Charles (Chuck) Oppermann" <chuckop@MICROSOFT.com>
> To: "'Scott Luebking'" <phoenixl@netcom.com>
> Subject: RE: CSS options
> Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 19:36:32 -0800
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Received on Tuesday, 10 March 1998 23:56:37 UTC