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From: Christian Heilmann
Date: Jan 10, 2006 3:00PM

> > I'd like to see some usability testing with elderly people on those
> > things. Actually it shouldn't be hard to write one that keeps metrics
> > of how many people _really_ used them. I guess after substracting the
> > 90% web designers who want to see how it works and if they used the
> > one at alistapart or an own one you'll get the real number.
>
> Then get the same number of users, but provide them with a browser that
> has the built-in text size widget showing (e.g. in IE, View > Toolbars >
> Customize... and add the size button; in Firefox, something like my
> "text size toolbar"
> <https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?application=firefox&id=472>)
> and give them a 3 second "you can use this to make text bigger or
> smaller to suit you"...and then send them to those sites again and see
> what happens.
>
> After that, send the two groups to different sites with notoriously
> small font sizes and record their thoughts...

Nah, all you are playing at is a lot of silver haired old ladies
calling you a sweetie for providing such a toolbar, and I am not going
to give you that pleasure :-)

I am pretty amazed that the IBM research and tools providing a proxy
to change web sites before they arrive at the end user is not
discussed more.

I was very impressed with the presentation at the world usability day:
http://www.accessonmainstreet.net/world-usability-day-accessibility-channel/a-broader-view-of-web-accessibility/

--
Chris Heilmann
Blog: http://www.wait-till-i.com
Writing: http://icant.co.uk/
Binaries: http://www.onlinetools.org/