"Has anyone ever found that sounds actually made a website better?"
Web pages can/should be developed to facilitate sound for disabled viewers. For example making sure there's alternate text tags for graphic buttons, so that text to speech readers can tell someone what the button text is. The short answer is, only sound with a purpose. Ease of listening for blind readers. Proper pronunciation for language learners. But rarely is sound on a website useful _unless requested by the user_. The real question is, "Why haven't web designers learned that forced sound is bad for the user?" The answer, you knew this, is that the designers of those political sites designed not for we as constituents, but for the party folks, for whom pomp is de riguer. Sadly, it is the modern condition, just as why managers buy proprietary while the engineers beg for open systems. About web accessibility- National arts and disability center (UCLA) on accessible web pages: http://nadc.ucla.edu/dawpi.htm Web accessibility is by the way one area where Open Source is particularly useful- if a software doesn't offer a desired affordance, one may go and add it. (This is what happened with Linux and all those Japanese and Mandarin screen shots we started seeing in the past couple years). Also- as a color blind web devotee- this is a public plea for catchy designers to please lay off the high contrast color sites! It's such a drag to be surfing along and some mostly pink or yellow website comes up- they appear blank to me. best wishes- rod g
