All transcriptions are created with voice recognition. They are not 100 percent accurate. You will find minor errors.
Welcome to Barrier-fre IT - Tips and tricks for Wednesday, January 25th, 2006. Today Alan Cantor continues with Wormholes Through WIndows. As we told you last week, Alan is a consultant in Toronto, CA. You can find out all about Alan and his expertise at, http://www.cantoraccess.com. Alan is a long time EASI friend and has done a number of presentations for EASI and all around the world for that matter.
Before Alan take over here, I would like to remind you that EASI has a number of free and fee based online live presentation, or clinics as we call then, on vairous topics that relate to barrier-free IT. You can find out more about them by pointing your browser to http://www.easi.cc/ and then click on Onlince Clinics. EASI also has a number of courses that delivered online and we have two starting February 6, 2006. The course are, Beginners Barrier-free Web Design and Barrier-free E-learning. If you go to the URL that I just mentioned and click on Online Courses, you can read all about them.
OK, enough of me. Here is Alan with Part 2 of Wormholes Through Windows.
In terms of the physical factors, both physical effort is good for usability. it should not be necessary to hold down a key in order to do anything. ideally computer systems should require low dexterity, you shouldn't have to hold your hand perfectly steady to do something. the less repetitive actions there are a more usability there is. examples of physical factors and repetitive actions, had ever been in a situation where you wanted to go to a command for there is a menu within a submenu within a menu that you wanted to go to it and it is so deeply buried. commands that are deeply buried work against usability. example with a screenwriter user or someone who can't use or chooses not to use a mouse to have to press a eight or 10 key sequence to get where you want to know you're very likely not going to enjoy that. my completely unscientific based observation is that if a person has to press three key is in order to perform a task is not going to want to use it or remember that. Everly good example at a complex dialog box is Microsoft Word, go into the tools menu and then options, holy cow are there ever a lot of options. web page navigation is also something that if you're not using a mouse or have trouble using a mouse there is a lot of repetitive motion. the prototypical way of navigating around a web page is to press the tab key. give a web page that has 30 or 40 links that is an action that is not easy to do. I have been looking at the Mozilla browser over the last few months and that has a really ingenious way of focusing.
I think this is a strategy that can work well. due to body positions there is very little computer systems that encourage body positions. my introduction into the assistive technology fields was back in 1990 when I developed a computer induced repetitive strain injury. that 1990 one is giving to do some research on this I did some research on a keyboard and mice that does help to discourage people from being able to sit and work in nine injuries potentially harmful positions. The third factor a like to talk about isproductivity, usability, it has when you can actually complete a task. Working with the client right now who is an office environment, and has upper body mobility impairments. She was not able to complete some of the tasks with the software that she was using because it was too complicated, you have to be able to complete a task. Is anything you ever tried to do with the program that you are using that you actually don't know how to complete it even though you know it is possible to do it.
Software as part of enhancing productivity needs to be able to resist air you should not get yourself into a situation where you are easy to produce some error. To try to exit and application without saving you will be prompted. Those kind of things tend to be a good thing. There should be graceful recovery from air which means that if you cause an error somehow that you are not confronted with an error message. That kind of message needs to be more instructive, a simple ballot box that says it is not possible to perform that operation. Examples of productivity, simple errors in Windows can cause problems, four example of the people here have been typing on the keyboard and then all of the sudden the keyboard response seems to stop and then many as are flying all over the place and you realize that you have pressed the alt key will activate the menubars.
It is the easy way to choose menus from the keyboard. Another simple air that can cause problems and for keyboard and screen reader users, is that if you choose an item on a menu that has been grayed out meeting it is not available to menu will disappear if you click on those menus with a mouse windows just beeps at you to let you know that you have choosen to use a command that is not available.If they use it and it is not available they have to start over they are punished. An example of graceful recovery from error is that sometimes you are in a menu of a submenu of the submenu and you choose the wrong command, once you've done that you have to start the process over again to use the right command. sSome of us have adapted, if you make a slight error you have to redo the process. There are other operating systems that have been devised that makes it very easy to go back to where you were. Emotional factors including, is it satisfactory to use does it make you feel like you are successful in what you are trying to do. is when most satisfying and fun to use? I would be interested to hear what people have to say to something like this. one of the paradoxes of usability, once you get good at something even though it may be crazy to use you get a sense of satisfaction. once you get used to using something that is a legitimate way of saying that the computer program is usable.
We'd like to thank Alan for allowing us to share his expertise. I'm sue we will have more podcasts featureing Alan. Next week, Robert Todd, from Gerogia Tech, will talk about best practices in distance learning. Robert is part of the GRADE Project, which is a project that offers a wide variety of resources and training in the area of distance learning and universal access. You can visit the GRADE project at, http://www.catea.org/grade/
See you next week.