Re: UKNM: Web Usage Stats

[Jon Beverley]

Robb Masters wrote:

> No, no, no - you don't lose anyone, that my point. Losing (read:

> rejecting, alienating, etc.) part of your target audience is a bad

> idea. But that doesn't mean compromising your site, or ignoring

> the potential of new technologies.


I have to add my two penn'eth to this one. When I first heard Robb

banging on about text-only browsers many moons ago, I have to admit to

thinking to myself: "get real". I mean, who's going to surf around

commercial or branded websites with Lynx and have serious expectations

of the site? But then I met a guy who was seriously visually impaired

and was using a text-to-speech synthesiser. I was amazed at the huge

number of sites that didn't do simple things, like include 'ALT' tags in

the images - I know this was done to death in the whole No.10 Downing

Street site story a while back, but it still took me aback somewhat to

discover that around 90% of the sites he tried were next to useless.


He also made me rethink horrible jingles on sites - I've always hated it

when the Java virtual machine starts whirring into action in order to

load up some dire MIDI file put together on one of the designers'

Bontempi organs. Yet, it (sometimes) made sense when you couldn't

actually see what was going on.


Being well versed in the 'compromise for commercial practicalities'

lines, I know very well that this is still a ridiculously tiny audience,

but what Robb puts his finger on is the fact that it is very easy to

cater in the most basic ways for just about everyone, just by telling

your site builders to remeber 'ALT' tags, for one thing.


Jon