Good morning!
You make an excellent point and do not sound negative to me at all.
This is a 100% valid concern that we do need to consider as we develop
our web front end. Even though our product is only used in vehicles
(cars, trucks, ships, etc), the discussion is still important on principle.
While it is true that the executive group and marketing are one driving force
of making the site modern and flashy, there is a real element of making
the user interface more intuitive and logical. We are introducing a large
number of new, moderately complex, user functions with this release.
We are trying to keep the user on one central page and have them use
controls that are evocative of something that all drivers are very familiar
with: a car dashboard.
There are a few other factors that went into the decision making process
that I won't go into to spare everyone additional boredom but this is not
really just a case of "Hey! Make this flashy!"
We are building smaller interface and lower bandwidth requirements
into the model to support a mobile front end as well. Those requirements
also could well support a screen reader friendly interface.
Thank you very much for your insight. You have certainly given me some
things to think about.
Have a great day!
Ed
> Date: Fri, 15 Oct 2010 00:37:32 -0700
> From: steve@holmesgrown.com
> To: plug-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
> Subject: Re: looking for recommendations for web development companies
>
> I appreciate your interest in looking to the community for ideas for
> development support. However I am concerned about what you are
> seeking in your web design goals. I as a blind person, take
> particular exception to things like heavy animation and eye candy!
> Frankly, eye candy most often flies in the face of accessibility; that
> is, the more eye candy, the more flash and the more animation someone
> throws at a website the far less easy it is for a blind person to even
> navigate around on such a site. Sory if I come off negative here but
> I think there should be a lot more to a good website than just
> artistic beauty or cuteness.
>
> In fact, I'm personally studying web development on my own time since
> my recent lay-off but it is all being done on a LAMP type setup -
> Linux Apache, MySQL (actually postgresql in my case) and php so I can
> eventually become marketable with these newer more modern skills.
>
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