Visual28-Personal Blog of Mark Aplet - Design, web, and other topics

I am still amazed when I talk to people about accessibility on the web and their response is typically "Blind people can surf the web?" This says two things. People think of only blind people when discussing accessibility, and second being people assume that if a person has a disability that they should not be using the web. This can't be further from the truth. Because this ignorance still exists, and I still encounter it I thought I would go back and write an accessibility 101 article.

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It's pretty common to to be given a tilted photo to use on a project. I find the tilted horizon to be distracting so a straightening is in order. Most of the time I see people placing a line or rule over the photo and straightening a photo by sight. This may be adequate for some photos, however, if accuracy and speed are are necessary this trick will allow you to straighten photos like a pro.

This is old trick to fix photos with slanted horizons. I think Scott Kelby demonstrated this technique way back in photoshop 5 so it's not a new trick by any stretch of the imagination. Designers today are still amazed when I show it to them. This trick is so simple and so easily overlooked that I just had to put it out there one more time for anyone that might be newer to photoshop or work infrequently in the program.

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I love the fancy whiz-bang features of javascript libraries as much as everyone else. I do however hate it when effects are used improperly. Remember when flash hit the web scene back in the mid 90’s or so? I seem to recall that just about every website had it’s logo spinning in 3D throughout some fancy, but useless skip intro splash page. Sadly I am now seeing javascript libraries being used in similar capacities.

Perhaps we need to stop for a moment to ask ourselves a few questions before implementing any particular effect or widget: Is this "thing" I am about to add to my site going to help my visitors or hurt them? Does it add value to the end user? Will it hurt them if it's not there? Will it confuse them if it is there?

In my own guerilla usability testing, (and in my personal experience) I have been to sites that have used some effect or widget simply because its neat and because it was available.  Oftentimes with negative results. People will exclaim, "What the heck are these people doing" referring to the sites developers. "Thats just dumb" As a result, the effect or widget they added to enhance the experience actually weakened the experience.

Unfortunately, I think we are going full circle and repeating the same mistakes we made with technologies like flash and the skip intro how many years ago.You would think that we would have learned something from this and improved overall. When used correctly, all of these tools can add significantly to a users experience. However we need to make sure we do usability testing before rolling them out for real. As the saying goes: Just because we can, doesn't mean we should.