Philosophy of website design

[Alan J. Flavell]

I think this is a case of semantics. I'm defining accessibilty as
used by many of the regulars here define it. Accessbility = fluid
design. Me, I agree with you.

You really are *not* ready to present yourself as a rapporteur for
the "regulars" of this group.

It may well be that a certain kind of authoring style does promote
both accessibility and fluid design. In fact, I think it does. It
may well be that a certain other authoring style is hostile to both
accessibility and fluid design. But that doesn't for a moment mean
that accessibility and fluid design are synonymous, nor have I seen
it seriously argued that they are. It's possible to have either one
without the other, and I've certainly seen examples of both.

What *could* well be argued, however, is that there's some underlying
design principle which, when used appropriately, happens to promote
both fluid design and accessibility. But that still by no means makes
them synonymous - as you claim (wrongly IMO) to represent the view of
the "regulars".

So please desist from trying to misrepresent the arguments presented
by others, and try to represent some original opinion of your own.
Otherwise, discussion is ultimately futile.

 

[Andy Dingley]

I think this is a case of semantics. I'm defining accessibilty as used by
many of the regulars here define it. Accessbility = fluid design. Me, I
agree with you.

Accessibility implies fluid design, but that's not to say that they're
"equal"

All that can be said is that non-fluid design reduces accessibility.

Remember too that accessibility is subjective. "Usability" is
objective. It's the ability for anyone (designer included) to use the
site. "Accessibility" is the capability for different people, with
different limitations of technology or personal ability, to achieve
usability as good as the optimum. The resultant accessible usability
depends a lot on the specific impairment -- colour vision problems
suffer from colour choice issues that are largely irrelevant for screen
size, bandwidth or eye resolution.

You state a reasonable requirement, that your luxury car brochure
should not be rendered with childish fonts. Now if that's an
_essential_ requirement, then I simply suggest that you don't put it on
the web. Stick to print media if it's vital for it to look like print.

For commercial reasons, I'm making a decision to put make my site
less "fluid" for the sake of image branding -- very important to
manufacturers of luxury autos.

I can access the web from my phone - and I can tell you I don't get an
awful lot of screen resolution or font choice there. So if you _MUST_
have a huge picture with many pixels, or you _MUST_ have a particular
font, then your choice is simple -- allow my device to downgrade it to
what's available, or lock my device out from accessing it altogether.

A good accessible, fluid, design doesn't force your content to
downgrade. For adequate levels of skill and features (OK, so CSS font
handling is admittedly poor) then the fluid design loses nothing that
the "sliced up bitmap in a table" rubbish of a few years ago could
offer. It also _gains_ a useful level of access for my phone, or my
short-sighted grannie.

Even if I view the posh brochure on my children's "barbiecomputer",
then there's no reason why the default "balloon" font should be
visible for a well-implemented page. If the barbietop is based on a
commodity platform then it probably has the old favourites of Arial
under the hood, it just doesn't show them when playing games. Even if
it does only have one font, and that's Comic Sans, then your choice
(for any implementation) is "Show it in Comic Sans or don't show it
at all). It's "fluid vs. forbidden" as a choice, not "stylish
vs. ugly"

Fluid doesn't mean "always degraded", it means "controlled
degradation when _needed_". In contrast, a fluid design will
generally give me workable navigation menus somewhere I can find them.
The rigid "my size or nothing" approach sometimes demands a pixel
width that isn't achievable on the barbietop, but all too often
it's more likely to take my 3000 pixel work desktop and stick a
centred 800 pixel stripe down a mere quarter of it. Now _that_ isn't
impressive quality either.

The crucial thing isn't about "breaking presentation", it's
about "presentation to places you otherwise won't reach at all".
When I read the brochure on my phone, then it might not show the
photograph of the dealership, but it should still give me the address.
Now I'm not stupid - I don't think phone-o-vision is as good as
it gets, I don't really think your car has square pixelated corners.
So if I want to see the best I can, I'll take a look on the best
device I can - maybe later on at home. In the meantime you've
caught me _when_ I was thinking about that snazzy new car I saw in the
car park (and just how much does it cost) or when I really wanted to
order a pizza. Your "perfection or nothing" strategy locks out
potential customers just at their most approachable, when _they're_
thinking about the product.

 

[=?iso-8859-1?Q?Dav=E9mon?=]

Accessibility implies fluid design, but that's not to say that they're
"equal"

All that can be said is that non-fluid design reduces accessibility.

Remember too that accessibility is subjective. "Usability" is
objective. It's the ability for anyone (designer included) to use the
site.

Not sure it's as black and white as that - useability also covers how easy
it is to learn to use, whether it provides a consistent mental-model etc,
and is very much defined by the individual /user/.

"Accessibility" is the capability for different people, with
different limitations of technology or personal ability, to achieve
usability as good as the optimum.

Not really, 'accessibility' is about addressing specific access
requirements that disabled people have. The capability spectrum of
normally-abled people and technologies is covered by useability.

You state a reasonable requirement, that your luxury car brochure
should not be rendered with childish fonts. Now if that's an
_essential_ requirement, then I simply suggest that you don't put it on
the web. Stick to print media if it's vital for it to look like print.

It is an _essential_ requirement, and one that is more than adequately met
by the technologies available. However, the web and multimedia means it
isn't an _essential_ requirement that somebody has to be able to /read/ it
at all - and should the user require non-visual then alternatives can be
given.

A good accessible, fluid, design doesn't force your content to
downgrade. For adequate levels of skill and features (OK, so CSS font
handling is admittedly poor) then the fluid design loses nothing that
the "sliced up bitmap in a table" rubbish of a few years ago could
offer. It also _gains_ a useful level of access for my phone, or my
short-sighted grannie.

Someone using a phone is not the same as short sighted granny.

My phone doesn't have a keyboard, and Google is practically useless because
it takes ages for me to key in the bloody search box. Different platforms
do have different useability requirements - just stuffing the same
'flexible' html page down the phone isn't going to meet those challenges.

Even if
it does only have one font, and that's Comic Sans, then your choice
(for any implementation) is "Show it in Comic Sans or don't show it
at all). It's "fluid vs. forbidden" as a choice, not "stylish
vs. ugly"

It's more a case of a scale of "1 size-fits nobody - fitness for purpose".

In your example the device is being restricted in its fitness for purpose -
the end user is going to have a Comic Sans experience, associate that cheap
experience with your products - so perhaps it is better not to display
anything at all, or perhaps special-needs and kids content, which leaves
out complex language.

The crucial thing isn't about "breaking presentation", it's
about "presentation to places you otherwise won't reach at all".
When I read the brochure on my phone, then it might not show the
photograph of the dealership, but it should still give me the address.

That's a content issue not a 'presentation' one.

Different platforms do often neccessitate different content. So the
argument to design the same content in an amorphous 'flexible' way, rather
than provide different content for different media, kind of vanishes...

 

[Toby Inkster]

But that doesn't for a moment mean that accessibility and fluid design
are synonymous, nor have I seen it seriously argued that they are.

Although fluid layouts are not necessarily accessible, and vice versa,
here is one link: if the layout is fluid it will cope better with font
enlargement, which could help people with poor vision.

 

[dorayme]

"Andy Dingley <[email protected]>"

Remember too that accessibility is subjective. "Usability" is
objective. It's the ability for anyone (designer included) to use the
site. "Accessibility" is the capability for different people, with
different limitations of technology or personal ability, to achieve
usability as good as the optimum.

Surely this is an unnecessary complication. To introduce 2 terms,
usability and accessibility? Why have so much baggage? They mean
pretty much the same unless you make them mean different things
by using them in different contexts (which you don't actually
have to do, either would be as good as the other in both)

There is the business of how easy a site is to use. This can be
judged subjectively or objectively in regard to a narrow group of
users (e.g. one) or a wide group (e.g. everyone on the planet
with a device that is made to access websites).

How to measure these things is a complicated business, true. But
any full assessment would take the widest possible context (all
possible users). And it would be judged on the ability of folk to
understand and use the site's content in as simple a way as
possible.

The complications are due to that the criteria for what makes it
easy for one person with one set of abilities on one type of
equipment are not necessarily optimum or even necessarily
compatible with what makes it easy for another.

The idea of separating style from content, making the basic HTML
have a consistency and easy to fathom structural meaning is a
modern idea that is consistently supported in this ng and is
about as good and general an answer as you can get in this field.
As for the details, that is always up for grabs.

 

[Neredbojias]

To further the education of mankind, dorayme

How to measure these things is a complicated business, true. But
any full assessment would take the widest possible context (all
possible users). And it would be judged on the ability of folk to
understand and use the site's content in as simple a way as
possible.

I don't think it could have been put any better. That _is_ what
accessibility/useability _is_ and further definition is just cruft that is
roughed and buffed to be huffed and puffed.