WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: line length and myth of the fold

for

From: Karl Groves
Date: Apr 18, 2008 2:00PM

> If you wish to "debunk the myth", you need to do better than that. For
> example, to present a reputable meta-study (over the many studies on
> this topic) or a very large study.

It seems to me the burden of proof is on the shoulders of those who claim
long lines are bad. Merely stating that "people with cognitive disorders may
have problems" isn't enough. Far too much in the field of accessibility is
based on conjecture. This sort of claim is exactly that - conjecture. I
don't see any statistically valid evidence based on studies involving users
with cognitive disorders to back it up. If published guidelines are going
to make claims which base conformance on measurable units, they'd better be
backed up with real data, otherwise it will be less than useless. We would
all do well to understand that the vast majority of web publishers out there
don't know as much about accessibility as we do and putting out
conjecture-based guidelines stands to mislead people who don't know any
better.

Karl