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Re: Design Principles for Cognitive Disabilities

for

From: Phil Teare
Date: Nov 9, 2006 2:20AM

>
> > 5) offer a variety of interfaces. People like choice, and some people
> will
> > need that 'other alternative'
>
> This seems like a good idea on the surface. I do wonder, however, if
> sometimes it is more confusing to have the choice of interfaces. The
> choices themselves might cause confusion, or at least they will add to
> the clutter of the design. But I'm open to the idea.
>

True this isn't easy to do without it getting cluttered fast, but as
designers, this is where you earn you keep. Here I'm simply saying offer a
variety of the usual interfaces for navigation, for example. Browse (site
map), search, bread crumb, including concise descriptions of each link,
pluss graphic illustration (icons). Now that audio is available to most why
not offer it (interest declared, but please do try www.talklets.com , it
starts at free.)

This isn't an overwhelming number of features, as long as you stick by the
good advice you've already devised.

> An example of a tip for those with English (read: language of content in
> question) as a second language, is offer graphical and audio content, and
> label the help options with the international "i" for information.

I used this in my first TTS app, and I got a lot of good feedback from
people for that. All to often help files are hidden to users due to the
literacy barriers. The white i in a blue background is imediately
recognisable to most.

>
> Or would they just link to other sites with that
> kind of information, such as the BBC site?
>

Again I have an axe to grind, but my major issue with the BBC's
accessibility page is to most with accessibility issues, its too cluttered.
And if you're going to make any page speech enabled (vie something like
talklets, or your own flash app) Then thats the page you should do it to!

typed quickly, hope it makes sense,

Phil