Re: Familiarity, Accessibility, and Survival of the Fittest

[Bill Haneman <Bill Haneman Sun COM>]

Gragory Merchan said:

>Placing a dialog-like closing button on a window makes it appear as
>if changes in the window will not immediately affect anything else
>because controls within dialog windows do not affect anything else
>until a button like Apply or OK is pressed. (And, as usual, I mean
>dialogs as those windows that have buttons like OK and Cancel - not
>just any window that doesn't contain a document.)
>
>An instant-apply window, regardless of the presence or absence of a
>closing button, may be a hinderance to accessiblity when feedback
>about changes is to be provided continuously. (Imagine, if you will,
>either many visual changes or some computer voice droning on and on.)

For users requiring such assistive technologies as speech feedback this 
can be moderated somewhat by the UI of the assistive technology.

But accessibility is not just about blind users, it affects vision 
impaired, mobility impaired, those who use additional assistive 
technologies and those who rely on themes/system settings to make their 
user experience more comfortable.

There are significant issues with interface windows that don't provide 
explicit "dismiss/quit" functionality other than that provided by the 
WM, and these (in my opinion) outweigh the putative disadvantages of 
providing "redundant" [DONE] buttons or [QUIT] menu items.  Size of 
window manager close boxes is one, another is the fact that the close 
boxes don't support focus tracking for onscreen magnifiers, others have 
been mentioned on this list already.

>Most people using computers now are Windows users. Windows does not
>provide instant-apply and such a thing will probably confuse people
>used to that system. Also, CDE and KDE do not provide instant-apply;
>those are the other widely used X desktops, and few (if any) other
>applications support instant apply - GNOME apps would seem quite odd
>running alongside them. The only users accustomed to instant-apply
>are those that have used MacOS or OS/2, and they are small in number
>and would expect a certain kind of interface to an instant-apply
>window.

I disagree, in that all of the above UIs can be used to create 
instant-apply interfaces using selectors/valuators/sliders etc.  And as 
for text widgets, any widget capable of doing automatic completion could 
be used for "instant apply".  

...

>A non-instant-apply environment is familiar, accessible, apt to be
>usable and accessible regardless of the window manager, and similar
>to other applications on X. 

This may be true.

>Perhaps the best fit for GNOME is to be like these other
>environments, but more capable, more accessible, much faster,
>and much better looking.
>
>
>Gregory Merchan
>_______________________________________________
>gnome-accessibility-list mailing list
>gnome-accessibility-list gnome org
>http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-list

------
Bill Haneman x19279
Gnome Accessibility / Batik SVG Toolkit
Sun Microsystems Ireland