Re: My Website

At 21:20:59 on Wed, 3 May 2006, Alan J. Flavell <flavell@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in <Pine.LNX.4.64.0605032102350.2676@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

On Wed, 3 May 2006, Mark Goodge wrote:

A large majority don't even have a clue that they can change the
size of the text using a simple menu option. If they can't read a
website, they will simply blame the site operator and go elsewhere.

And we should take their cluenessnes into account on every page that
we write why, exactly?

Because those of us who write commercial web sites for clients who pay us to do so have a responsibility to those clients *not* to exclude a hefty proportion of their potential site visitors.

You operate in an academic environment, Alan, and that's just fine - it gives you the freedom to write your pages in a manner which can encourage visitors to educate themselves in the use of their browsers. What is more, the types of visitors you get can quite probably be expected to take more interest in doing so that other subsets of the web browsing population.

If I write a web site which is aimed at potential purchasers of chain-link fencing, educating them in how to get the best out of the web is very, very low on my list of priorities. Enabling visitors to learn all about chain-link fencing without having to jump through hoops in order to do so easily, and thereby making them feel warm and cuddly towards my client who is hoping to sell them some of that fencing - that is my top priority.

If such visitors can't use the site easily, they will not sit down and study how better to do so - they will quite simply go elsewhere. And I will have let my client down, even if he never knows it.

It's not the ideal way, no doubt. But it is a commercial reality.
--
Molly Mockford
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety
deserve neither liberty nor safety - Benjamin Franklin
(My Reply-To address *is* valid, though may not remain so for ever.)
.

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