Re: Team Excellence Award Winner

  • From: "Octavian Rasnita" <orasnita@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Sun, 2 Dec 2007 15:15:53 +0200

Yes of course it doesn't need that. But a web designer doesn't always creates what he likes. Many times he need to respect what the client likes, even if he tries to explain the client that what he wants is not something good.


Octavian

----- Original Message ----- From: "John Greer" <jpgreer17@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, December 02, 2007 2:04 PM
Subject: Re: Team Excellence Award Winner


That was my point though. It doesn't always have to have clowns and balloons dancing around everywhere to be both eye appealing and functional. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Octavian Rasnita" <orasnita@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, December 02, 2007 1:07 AM
Subject: Re: Team Excellence Award Winner


You contradict yourself in the same message. You didn't made the design of that web page. You just said its design is based on Google's design. And by the way, Google's design is very friendly for everyone because it is very fast and the page is not filled with many images or javascript code, but it is not a very nice looking web page, but just a very simple one. Such a web page could be very easily created by someone that knows a little HTML and CSS and no special web designer skills are required anyway. I don't think many corporate web sites would ask a web design company to create their web page in such a simplistic way.
It would be extraordinary good for the blind visitors...

Octavian

----- Original Message ----- From: "John Greer" <jpgreer17@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, December 01, 2007 10:33 PM
Subject: Re: Team Excellence Award Winner


Well for anyone interested, my website Blind Crawler at www.blindcrawler.com was designed by me a blind person. Like I said it is a matter of finding the right tools that can work for you. The overall layout was based on the look and feel of google while not explicitly following their design. The search engine code was generated by using a search engine generator. The thing I can say about it is the site has appeal for both the sighted and the blind from the feedback I have received. Of course while it may not appeal to everyone either sighted or blind it still does not say that it is not functional for peoples needs. So, I have to disagree that a blind person cannot design a website that is functional for the sighted and the blind. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Léonie Watson" <tink@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, December 01, 2007 2:09 PM
Subject: RE: Team Excellence Award Winner


You're right about different
target groups. Some people will prefer a simple website with simple design,
whilst others will prefer a more interactive website.

The one thing that all user groups have in common, is that they wish
to be able to complete their goals successfully online. Each website should
be built to support this aim, whatever the nature of the site itself.

Google and Face Book are two good examples. Although both could be
improved in terms of accessibility to some extent or other, they are both
fit for purpose.

People come to the Google site with the goal of finding information.
The website is simple and supports people in successfully completing their
goal.

The Face Book website represents a website that the user group you
describe, 13 to 18 year olds with little or no IT experience, find very
appealing. There is plenty of interaction and feature rich functionality.

Face Book however has a very simple design. There is a single Flash
banner and otherwise, the site is entirely made from basic HTML content
driven by scripting.

So there you have two examples. Both the most popular in their
field, both with completely different purposes and both with remarkably
simple designs.

As to whether a VI developer could have built either site, I can see
no reason why not. In fact a VI developer would undoubtedly have made a far better job of it because they would have included greater accessibility and
usability, making both websites easier to use for everyone.

The designs on both websites are plain and simple. The only point of
contention might be the Flash banner on the Face Book website. But since
this is third party advertising, the developer of the Face Book website
would only need to place it correctly within the site, without needing to develop the Flash themselves. The HTML and scripting represent no problem at
all.


I think you've said elsewhere that a VI person could fit into a web
development team. It's reasonable to say that large scale, feature rich
websites are rarely developed by a single person, so the question of whether
a VI person could make such a site alone is redundant to some extent. If
sighted developers customarily work in teams to make such websites, why
would you expect a VI developer to do it alone?

Regards,
Léonie.

-----Original Message-----
From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Octavian Rasnita
Sent: 30 November 2007 07:37
To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Team Excellence Award Winner

What do you mean by sighted audience?
As I explained before, there are target groups of visitors that will always prefer a design made by a blind and they won't like the good-looking design made by the sighted because those nice pages would have too many images and Javascript. When I was sighted I was a web designer, but I used to like even disabling the images in the browser, like the blind persons do, because the
page used to download faster.

But it doesn't mean that sites with that simple and very friendly design,
like Google's page, have a good-looking web design.

I've seen that the target group that use to evaluate better what a
good-looking page looks like is the group of teens from 13 to 18 years old, the kind of users with no iT background, that use the internet mostly for
chatting, watching to movies and pictures and other things like that.
That is a very big target group, and when the members of that group don't like something, they are not able to tell what they don't like. They just
don't like it and that's enough.

Octavian

----- Original Message -----
From: "Léonie Watson" <tink@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, November 29, 2007 9:44 PM
Subject: RE: Team Excellence Award Winner


Teddy,

I think you might have moved the goal posts slightly. Are you
arguing that a VI developer can't create websites with enough visual finery
to appeal to a sighted audience, or that a highly creative and fully
accessible website can't be built?

Regards,
Léonie.
-----Original Message-----
From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Octavian Rasnita
Sent: 29 November 2007 06:40
To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Team Excellence Award Winner

Hi Léonie,

You didn't understand me. It is not that I don't like or like a certain
site.

I like your site and I also like the site made by other members of this
list, because they are simple, with no stupid images put there only for
making the site look nicer for the sighted, with no useless javascript code
that makes the site appear more "dynamic", with no Flash code that just
shows something moving...

But if I ask my sighted colleagues, and from the opinions I've read in the
last time from the clients of the company I work for, most of them don't
like those simple pages, and prefer those considered "nice-looking" only
because they have a lot of Javascript, Flash, AJAX widgets, images and so
on.
This is considered to be the "future" of the web, and not the standard
html-only web pages with some images and a little javascript.

I found that usually the specialists in iT like the standard pages, because they usually find easier what they need in those pages, because they usually
need to use the web only for reading some news, download some
programs/drivers/other kind of files, while the whole rest of the world use the web mostly for social activities... with other words for spending their time. For most of the users, the web is a kind of interactive TV and a way of creating new relations, and the web environment should look nice in the first place, and not respect standards, work correctly for everyone, work
fast, be accessible for the disabled or other "unimportant things" like
these.

This also depend on the country we are located. Maybe in some countries the
companies are really searching for web designers that know W3C's
recommendations, know how to make an accessible web page, because the laws from those countries impose that, and maybe those laws are really respected.

But this is not the case in all the countries at all.

In my country the companies usually don't care about the accessibility
problems, and there is no law that impose that.
There was a law proposal in this direction, but it was not voted, because
there was no suficient power to sustain it.

So, with or without such a law, the most important thing is to make a page
looking nice from the sighted point of view, and not accessible, or that
respects standards, because otherwise no client company will like it.

There are good web designs company that try to teach their clients what is considered to be good, but it is very hard for them because their clients prefer a page that's moving and jumping in order to catch the attention... no matter that some specialists tell them that in the case of such pages, the attention is distracted to non important things, and not attracted to
the most important part of the page.

But... this is the situation, no matter if we like it or not.

Octavian

----- Original Message -----
From: "Léonie Watson" <tink@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2007 10:20 PM
Subject: RE: Team Excellence Award Winner


Teddy,

At the risk of opening myself up for comments based on whether you
*like the designs or not, please take a look at my website.
http://www.tink.co.uk/

It was developed by myself, with no visual assistance. I am
completely blind.

The site has three visual looks. The layout, colour scheme and
artwork differs for each skin. You can select the skin you prefer through
the style switcher.

Regards,
Léonie.
-----Original Message-----
From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of inthaneelf
Sent: 28 November 2007 19:46
To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Team Excellence Award Winner

teddy, the old point that this references is that this blind gentlemen... made a website that is compliant to the accessibility standards... and was
given an award by sighted reviewers, *sigh*

I...
For Blind Programming assistance, Information, Useful Programs, and Links
to Jamal Mazrui's Text tutorial packages and Applications, visit me at:
http://grabbag.alacorncomputer.com
to be able to view a simple programming project in several programming
languages, visit the Fruit basket demo site at:
http://fruitbasketdemo.alacorncomputer.com

----- Original Message -----
From: "Octavian Rasnita" <orasnita@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2007 7:57 AM
Subject: Re: Team Excellence Award Winner


In my country there is a very well known yearly contest named Internetics. Well, most of the sites that get awards in that contest, are horrible from the point of view of the blind. So a contest only doesn't mean anything.

Please tell us where can we see the web page made by that blind guy, and I
will tell you if a blind person can do it without sighted help.
I've seen many messages on this list telling how cool web pages can a
blind do, with with no single example.

Octavian

----- Original Message ----- From: <james.homme@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2007 3:42 PM
Subject: Team Excellence Award Winner



Hi All,
Where I consult, one of our fellow listers was on a team who won a very prestigious award. The team developed a highly visible web application. Jeff Fidler designed and coded the GUI interface for the site using HTML,
CSS and Javascript. He used Section 508 and W3C techniques and the
sighted
people in the company rave about it.

I write this to urge anyone who thinks that someone who is blind cannot
design Web interfaces well to keep on trying. You can do it.

Jim

James D Homme, , Usability Engineering, Highmark Inc.,
james.homme@xxxxxxxxxxxx, 412-544-1810

"Never doubt that a thoughtful group of committed citizens can change the
world.  Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." -- Margaret Mead

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