On Aug 24, 2006, at 11:22 AM, Townson, Chris wrote:
They are more important if they're the majority or target audience.
You may like to read "Utilitarianism" by John Stuart Mill ;D
The "majority argument" may sound fine on the surface but,
ethically speaking, it is riddled with holes:
For example, if "the majority" want to commit an unethical act does
that make it ethical?
If the majority victimise and persecute a minority ... or refuse to
try and understand and accommodate their differing requirements ...
then, I would argue, the majority is _still_ wrong.
Hence my disclaimer - I was speaking about commercial sites/
ventures... not ethics and morality. There is always a target
audience when selling something, and that is the majority of people
buying your product (and no, it's not always the case of "every
single person that might ever buy your product" - *gasp*.
"For hundred upon hundreds of years, there have been accessibility
problems with design. So how have they dealt with historically? I’ll
tell you how. The designer, using his expert knowledge of these
things, made logical, educated decisions that allowed things to be
usable (or readable, or accessible) by the vast majority of people
while still allowing him or her a level of control and aesthetic
freedom that he or she was comfortable with..."
I think the gist of "the principle of least interference" argument
is that, with the web, we are dealing with a _fundamentally_
different animal which turns the tables on inherited design
procedures.
With a book, for instance, the designer _has_ to make the decisions
Jeff Croft mentions in the above quote. However, on the web, this
is not necessary. On the contrary, the end user is able (and often
willing) to overrule the "expert knowledge" and "educated
decisions" of the designer.
Very true, and that's my point - there are a lot of tools available
if somebody wants to override what the visual designer dictated - to
a certain extent the same is true with a book - if the type is too
small, use a magnifying glass. If you don't like the font used, copy
it out by hand or scan it into your computer and change it... an
extreme example, but we are talking about options available to the
user aren't we?
Of course - it is perfectly reasonable for the designer to try and
continue as with more traditional media. Questions such as 'What
precise fonts can I use?' indicate the presence of this approach.
However, I would like to suggest that design for the web is more
successful when some or, indeed, most of those decisions which used
to be in the purview of designers are delegated to the end user.
As I implied before, the skill is in achieving something that
balances the wishes of the designer (or client) and the ultimate
authority of the user.
I don't agree that most decisions that were in the hands of designers
should be delegated to the end user, however...
Well said - that's why the stance of "don't specify any font families/
font sizes at all in your stylesheets" is, at best, a ridiculous
viewpoint. The visual designer makes a decision (be it good, bad or
mediocre) about how to visually present something - if the user needs
something different they can choose to use tools available to change it.
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