Re: [Usability] Special Open Source Issue of Interactions Magazine

[Lennart Borgman <lennart borgman 073 student lu se>]

Hi Allan,

Alan Horkan wrote:
> On Tue, 16 Jan 2007, Lennart Borgman wrote:
...
> One of the biggest tricks in open source development is breaking down the
> problem into smaller pieces.  The Human Interface Guidelines have been
> essential in allowing users to express to developers how much they really
> do care about usability, and consistency in particular. The buzzword here
> might be heuristic analysis, because with a few general rules you can get
> a lot done.


That is a useful view of it.


> Understanding accessibility (a11y) helps you justify a lot decisions and
> things to avoid like the careful use of colour and texture. 


Yes, but there are so many parts of it. It is hard for me to understand 
how any software can still be released where not every feature is easily 
accessible from the keyboard for example.


> If you care about accessibility it often helps if you can turn it back
> around into a techincal discussion which developers will be more
> interested in hearing.


My concern is that unfortunately accessibility seems to have low 
priority. I have for example contacted the developers of a very good GPL 
software and tried to make them fix bugs that makes the keyboard 
unusable in certain cases. Important usecases actually. After several 
month I still have not got any reply.

Still, technically to fix the problem you just have to add one or two 
lines to the code.


> > Antoher of my favorites when it comes to usability is my frustration
> > about the continous wheel inventing. One time when I installed GNU/Linux
> > everything went very, very fine -- until I should login and start using
> > it. I had no mouse on that system. I tried Ctrl-Esc, the Window Keys,
> > Ctrl-Alt-Del and everything else I learned from my MS Windows
> > experience. Nothing of it worked.
>
> Funny you should mention that because if I recall correctly one of the
> stated reasons for not copying those keybindings is *accessibility* or
> more specifically predictability. [1]


It is a bit funny of course. There is no reason excluding a familiar key 
like Ctrl-Esc. If you use something like "StickyKeys" you can first type 
Ctrl and then Esc. If you still think it is bad from an accessibility 
point then do not exclude it. Add something that is better instead. (Of 
course you can not always add and add keys but in such a central case 
like this I think you can do it.)


> Gnome uses
> Alt+F1 for the main menu
> Alt+F2 for the run dialog
> ...


Makes me think of myself sitting there and trying different key 
combinations before giving up ...


> Given the majority of existing users are familiar with Microsoft
> technologies I certainly favour an embrace and extend approach but that is
> easier siad than done.  Ideally though it is projects like OLPC targetting
> the even bigger audience of totally new users which have the potential to
> make revolutionary changes.

I am glad to hear you like favour this.

Thanks for your thoughts,
L