Went to a session about Google Gears but left as soon as I heard the words “stack overflow”. Instead I met Dan Z from Box UK and we chewed the ecud for a bit.
Next up was Robin Christopherson talking about ‘Attractive yet usable’ sites. It’s always interesting hearing from someone like Robin who is blind himself. Although it’s interesting seeing a blind user on good and bad websites, there wasn’t a whole lot new here, especially if you’ve spent a bunch of time working with accessibility issues already.
Briefly, he covered:
– Benefit to all users of having clear and accessible sites. Demonstrated the use of audio descriptions.
– Disney and GM sites which don’t have proportional fonts or consistent navigation. Vodafone new website – lots of effort for accessibility but still problems with raising font sizes where text overlaps or becomes distorted.
– Drag and drop etc is likely to become more prominent as apps become more advanced. Need to ensure that these sites are device independent so that they can be used by people with hand-eye coordination problems.
The simplest way to test is to try unplugging the mouse and then see if you can navigate.