Not happy? use hotmail.
]]>-Joseph
]]>You’re missing the point. There are several aspects of the Gmail interface which are inaccessible not because they are trying to work some gee-whiz helpful interface feature, but rather because they want to break web standards. (Specifically, they want to break them in order to stop people from designing geegaws that parse standard HTML and reverse engineer it to use the Gmail website for purposes for which it was not intended.) Rolling custom JavaScript links, breaking the whole site if JS is not running, etc. does not improve the interface. It makes the interface worse for some people (e.g., blind people), and it makes the interface no better for you. Similarly, Gmail’s global keyboard shortcuts are implemented in such a way as to break common usability features such as Mozilla Firefox’s find-as-you-type. Again, that is a thoughtless decision that makes the interface worse, not better.
Can you think of any Gmail interface feature that would be broken by fixing Gmail’s accessibility issues? I can’t, but I’m not tremendously familiar with how Gmail has progressed since April. If you can think of such an example, what is it? And why is it so important to the experience of using Gmail that it is worth trashing the user experience for blind people?
Finally, this: I also don’t see how a blind person should even expect to use PCs to their full potential — for the fact that PCs are designed on the basis that the user can SEE seeing as it has a MONITOR
… is just crap, and an excuse for laziness. Accessible web design is something that we all can and should do; it takes a shift in how you think about designing web pages but it is worth making that effort–particularly as computers and the Internet are daily becoming more and more important to people’s everyday lives, and when they have tremendous potential to improve the lives of the disabled if conscientiously designed. Telling blind people to go screw themselves because you’re too damn lazy to fix your broken website is not a viable option.
I also don’t see how a blind person should even expect to use PCs to their full potential – for the fact that PCs are designed on the basis that the user can SEE seeing as it has a MONITOR.
Why complain? There are plenty of “blind friendly” things, and why should innovation be marred due to this?
What I would say is that g-mail should have an alternative interface. But changing the current would piss me off, and if they had a message saying “sorry, your interface has been downgraded so the blind minority can use it” would only anger people and possible even turn people against the design community.
Partially sighted? Get a bigger monitor.
]]>