Author Archives: Chris

Not everyone sees things the way you do

Open Access card

At the SCIP event last month, the group leader asked the community organisations if they had any specific problems they wanted addressing.

“Accessibility,” said one man. “What do you mean?” “You know, blind people, that kind of thing.”

Ian shifted in his chair, and then spoke. “Do you have a problem with the site? Are people coming to you, complaining that they can’t access it?”

They weren’t, and a conversation developed. What kind of people visit the site? For what? It’s a radio website, so would partially-sighted people be coming through the site, or through streaming players, or iTunes? Is there any evidence of people using screen readers to reach the site?

How useful is it to focus on blind people when we think about accessibility?

Not everyone sees things the way you do

For us, accessibility is a broader concept. It’s about all the different ways people might want to access your site. If you have events, will people want to view them on the move? Do you need some mobile pages?

Is there lots of good information on your site? Will people be wanting to print it out? If so, you should have good print stylesheets to make the printed pages look good and not waste paper.

I like to use a computer-based calendar. I don’t want to visit your website to find out about new events. Can I subscribe to your calendar?

And what about news? I like to read mine as email. Can I get news from your site through email?

This is accessibility. Making sure your site is accessible to all your users in the way they want to interact with it. And that means blind people with screen readers. But it also means a great deal more.

More tips »

Stealing best practice

IMG_0469.pngWe’ve been doing some interface design for Magic Studio, a multimedia tool used by schools.

In one task, the students have to decide how significant they think economic, social and environmental factors are for a variety of objects (in this case, buildings).

Ian’s been facing the problem of how to represent the results. Three separate screens? Live feedback? Perhaps the icons should be coloured or varied by size to convey their different axes?

Continue reading →

Thinking about technology

Ian and I were at a community IT event a couple of weeks ago. The aim was to connect design agencies with community groups who needed assistance with their online presence. It reminded me of how differently people see technology – annoyance, tool, magic or secret club.

Community groups are used to doing things themselves, and more than one of them had tumbled down the rabbit hole with a Dreamweaver book in hand. I wanted to make the point that it’s more important that they can articulate their needs and find willing helpers than it is to understand the technology details.

Ian took the opposite view – that people have inflated expectations of new media, and that if they expect to be running a publishing system they have to learn the language and workflow of the tools they’ll be using.

In a way it comes down to roles – you need someone who can draw the organisational big picture, and someone who understands how to format posts in WordPress. In community organisations these roles often fall on the same person, and thinking about their online presence from such different vantage points can be difficult.

Eureka! I’ve got a great idea for an online business

Eureka! cardIan took a call recently. It was a man who wanted an e-commerce website. He wanted to know how much it would cost. Ian asked him why he wanted a site at all.

This flummoxed the man. He’d called a few design agencies, and none had asked him this. In fact, they hadn’t asked him much before giving him a figure.

“What’s your competition?” I heard Ian say. “Have you done a competitive analysis?”

I was feeling sorry for our potential client. I wanted to give him a figure, but Ian was right. An ecommerce site is a shop. Behind the shop is a business, and it’s the business that matters. Continue reading →