Re: [Usability] HIG and the use of sound

[Calum Benson <calum benson sun com>]

On Tue, 2003-05-06 at 11:03, Alastair Scott wrote:
> Apart from a few throwaway remarks (deaf people might not be able to use your application if a feature relies solely on sound) there is no formal discussion, in the HIG, of the use of sound.

I think that's basically because nobody could really think of any good
guidelines, other than the accessibility ones (must be turnable-off,
must not be the only indication that something has happened).

If you have some good ones, feel free to post them, or better still file
them in a bug report against the HIG so we don't forget about them.  I'm
guessing a good guideline to start with would be one for determining
when an event is suitable for inclusion in the Sound Events tab of the
desktop Sound Preferences window (right now it mostly comprises sounds
for individual games, which doesn't seem right to me), and when it
should only appear in the application's own Preferences window.

Cheeri,
Calum.

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson sun com            GNOME Desktop Group
http://ie.sun.com                      +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems