The personal ramblings and adventures of Mike Altman

Web users are known to be efficient at scanning large amounts of information in order to satiate the user’s goals for visiting the site. These goals rarely include attention to advertisements; which web users have learned to effectively avoid without the need for direct attention. It is clear that web users are able to easily separate these advertisements as they typically appear with a visual disconnect (both in styling and location) from relevant web content. In this study I attempted to validate that this type of inattention can manifest itself in actual web content that may contain the user’s desired goal. I did this by asking participants to search a content rich website for a word while I manipulated the location and style of the target word in a way that would intuitively bring attention to the location of the word.

The results established that the styling of content with shading or a border has negative effects on a web user’s visual search through a web page. Users process visual cues that are not consistent with a web site’s visual treatment and purposely do not attend to these areas. Web users also use expectations for the location of non-relevant items in order to give priority to goal oriented content during visual search. By defining the avoidance of content in a visual search task in terms of banner-blindness, these findings demonstrated the existence of content-blindness.

Download the complete study (you can skip to the Discussion section for the fun stuff)

Content_Blindness.pdf

What percentage of people use the closed captioning function on their TVs at home? The technology has been standardized to the point where it would be preposterous to broadcast without closed captioning. TV plays a pivotal role in home entertainment and news. Why shouldn’t it be accessible to those with disabilities? In today’s fast growing technological environment, it is clear to see that the use computers and more importantly the internet, play an important role in the lives of everyday people. The span of information and functionality on the web is almost to the point of necessity. We use it to find jobs, to do work, to learn and participate in school, to communicate, to share, and to entertain ourselves. When compared to what people use TV for, it’s hard to imagine that the same standards don’t apply.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has worked hard to push the standardization of web accessibility. With the creation of the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), the W3C has put its best foot forward in educating business and web developers of the importance of web accessibility. Their website acts as a hub for design resources and best practices, as well as a forum for solving complex web accessibility challenges. New challenges arise along with the wide adoption of new technology that focuses on interactive experiences for the typical web user by manipulating content on the client’s end. JavaScript, AJAX, and Flash heavy websites prove to be a challenge to those who require the aid of assisting technology in order experience the content on the page.

No one can dispute the need for wide acceptance and implementation of web accessibility standards. There are about 60 million people in the U.S. alone who cannot utilize a computer in order to use the internet in a normal fashion. This is no shortage of users that can be simply neglected when running a business online. The question is then, why are more companies not investing proper standards compliant development? I speculate that the answer has to do with major flaws in the typical web design life cycle.

The first, simply being oversight in the planning stages. Many successful internet based companies don’t start with standard iterative design process. Depending on the product, the focus is either on some innovative back-end functionality, or flashy front-end development that draws attention. As these products become successful, new version as built on old version until so much time and money has been put into it that a complete overhaul and redesign for overlooked accessibility standardization would be far too expensive. The best way to solve this type of problem is, for large, successful internet companies to take the initiative and lead the way in best practices. Yahoo! has a mandatory accessibility training program that all new developer employees must go through. Google has invested into an automatic captioning for YouTube videos in order to make it much easier for deaf people to enjoy the same procrastination tool that many web users have been able to use for several years now.

The second flaw that I can see contributing to the lack of standardization in web accessibility, does simply not know how to sell the idea. Imagine you work for a web design shop, and you want to pitch allocating some extra budget for ensuring that the product is compliant with web accessibility standards. How would you sell that to a client? I can predict that 9 times out of 10, the client will say: “but our target audience isn’t blind/hard of hearing/elderly/(insert your own excuse).” People generally just aren’t educated enough about the need for accessibility to argue the point. This is where the WAI comes in. An accredited town crier who has presence in the developer’s community as source for professional education is exactly what we accessibility needs in order become a standard.

Further Reading

• Web Accessibility Initiative – WAI Homepage
• CNN/CNET – Web accessibility no longer an afterthought
• Practical Ecommerce – Accessibility: How Many Disabled Web Users Are There?

Many developing countries have adopted an unlikely form of technology, which many take for granted. Where it was once expensive to run a power-grid, let alone a phone line people now are able to communicate without wires with the use of cell phones. These areas have skipped many technological steps and have taken a giant leap in order to be able to communicate and do business like the rest of the world does.  It’s hard to imagine how integral the ability to communicate is to daily life. Sure it makes the world a smaller place, but sometimes that’s needed in order to survive in an ever expanding technological world.

Lara Farrar describes in a CNN article how a cell phone has transformed a Ghanaian man’s small taxi business. He is able to get calls to be picked up at any time from any anywhere. He is able to be on-call at all hours, and thus never losing on a business opportunity. Families can stay in touch easier from long distance, and farmers can keep track of market prices a town over in order to keep from losing on potential profit. It’s hard to dispute that the wide acceptance of a cheap, mobile, wireless, device could be a bad thing. It won’t transform a developing country into a modern high-tech society over night, and it is of course no substitute for good education and good health care systems. But it helps.

One of the challenges that faced cell phone adoption in developing countries was the requirement for electricity in order to charge phones. Many of these places have scarce and non-dependable energy resource, and thus driving the cost of owning a cell phone up. Samsung has recently started selling a reasonably priced solar charging phone called the Solar Guru. It has all of desired basic features of a modern cell phone including an FM radio, MP3 ring tones, games, and a torch light (a useful feature I had on an old phone that I am saddened does not appear on a lot of newer phones). This phone costs about $60 and can run for 5-10 minutes of talk time with just one hour of sunlight. It’s incredible how something that comes in no scarcity in many developing farming communities can be used to bring vital communication to places where once people had to travel to neighboring towns just to charge a cell phone.

Samsung is one of the few who attempts to bring cell phones to new markets where there is seldom a competitor. Its simply good business. Out of this there are sure to be competitors who will be able to offer more at a cheaper cost. Many of us in the US complain of cell service providers taking advantage of the consumer. This is the only downside that I can see with the potential boom in cell phones in poor developing countries. I fear that the cut-throat competition that thrives in cell service providers may attempt to get the best of economically week societies. What would be a preventative solution? Many have already adopted a pay as you go type plan in these places. Maybe if the trend continues in this direction, consumers will be safe from the communications giants that wring many modern consumers into contracts that exploit.

Further Reading

• CNN – Africans get upwardly mobile in cell phone boom
• Green Technology Daily - Will solar speed up emerging cell phone revolution
• Developments.org - Mobile phone revolution