WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

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RE: New WebAIM Site Released

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From: Patrick Lauke
Date: Jun 12, 2006 5:00AM

> Jukka K. Korpela

> "A bit" from a normal user's perspective perhaps, but the amount and
> organization of content must be quite confusing to many people with
> cognitive and other disabilities.

Catering for users with cognitive disabilities on such an information
rich site may well require a separate type of interface altogether, with
a far heavier use of iconography for instance (depending on the severity
of the disability, even up to a "peepo" style arrangement).

> No, it's a good design principle. Early studied in web usability
> indicated, according to Jakob Nielsen,

...the master of generalisations...

> that
> "only 10% of Web users would scroll a navigation page to see
> any links
> that were not visible in the initial display.

Does this study take into account the wide variety of different web users,
different types of web site (shopping, information resource, etc)?
I'd posit that the scrolling behaviour of users will vary depending on
the goal they're trying to achieve on a site.

> >> The red backgrounds of headings hurt my eyes
> >
> > But that would fall under "personal (aesthetic) preference", no?
>
> My eyes know nothing about esthetics when they hurt. It's of
> course not as
> bad as it could be (many site use pure red in large
> quantities), but it's
> still unnecessary and distracting.

So, do we deduce from that that one should never use red because of your
particular (physical) aversion to said colour? How do you justify "unnecessary"?
Is any styling "unnecessary"? Where do we draw the line then?

Patrick
________________________________
Patrick H. Lauke
Web Editor / University of Salford
http://www.salford.ac.uk
________________________________
Web Standards Project (WaSP) Accessibility Task Force
http://webstandards.org/
________________________________