On 23 May 2007, at 02:15:30, Patrick H. Lauke wrote:
Nick Fitzsimons wrote:
Although it might be important from an accessibility perspective
that an unsighted user be able to say "the third one on that page"
without having to count the preceding list items - hmm, now that's
something to think about..
Not quite sure how they'd say "the third one" without actually
having counted, though...am I missing something? Or do you mean in
situations where a sighted user and a blind user discuss the page?
If that's the concern, then *any* CSS that visually changes
position of things on screen would be a problem (just thinking
about sighted users saying "the X that comes before Y" not
realising that X was absolutely positioned above Y, for
instance)...which I'd say is an edge case anyway.
I'm assuming here that a screen reader imparts the additional
information implied by the distinction between ol and ul, such as
specifying "Three" rather than "Bullet". I haven't checked, but I
believe that is the case from previous tests.
From that perspective, I was thinking in terms of the situation
where a blind user, having heard the description of something they
like, might find it easier to phone the company to place an order. If
the screen reader said something like "List item: Three: blue
sweater" instead of "List item: Bullet: blue sweater", then rather
than the user having to count and remember that the blue one was the
third item description they heard on that page, they would be able to
tell the person taking the order that the thing they want is "the
third one on the sweaters page". Sometimes people's interaction with
web sites can lead to interaction with the rest of reality :-)
It seems to me possible that the use of an ordered, as opposed to an
unordered, list might offer an additional affordance to a blind user.
Of course, that's just speculation on my part - but it could be
something worth checking out in user testing.
The next problem then arises when the oh-so-clever designer has
abused CSS to make the seventh item appear in third place. I seem to
recall a blind friend of mine bitching and whining (with excellent
reason) about some similar usability nightmare in the past...
something to do with being asked if he meant the one on the right or
the left of the third row. It was impossible for him to determine
what came from which row, or on what side it appeared, because the
person on the phone saw the page with some too-clever-by-half CSS
applied, and he just had SuperNova.
FWIW, that's a good reason not to hide the numbers on an ordered list
just to make things look nice.
(And if anybody was wondering, blind people do have preferences in
the colours they wear.)
Cheers,
Nick.
--
Nick Fitzsimons
http://www.nickfitz.co.uk/
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