Pattern 51: The halt and the lame and the stranger at the door
AKA:

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You are designing a site that will be used by people you know nothing about. You want to present them with ACCEPTABLE WORDING (50).

Users may have disabilities. They might not speak your language or understand your icons. But you still want them on your site.

Therefore

Learn the relevant legislation. Ensure your site can be read by text-to-speech programs. Be considerate. Allow for cultural difference – even encourage it. Label your icons. No red on green screens, SUPPORT COLOUR WITH SPATIAL METAPHOR (69), use keyboard shortcuts.

Use WORDS BEFORE ICONS (57) AND CONTENT BEFORE GRAPHICS (55). Consider your USE OF COLOUR (53).

This pattern conceals a great deal of complexity. We envisage the possibility of complete pattern languages for building interfaces that are usable by disabled users. If your site is intended to be accessed widely then you should also consider its INTERNATIONALIZATION (52). Advice on how to make your site more accessible to disabled users is available at www.w3.org/WAI. Nielsen (2000) provides much useful material on these topics.

Discussion - forces - known uses

These days there are legal requirements in places such as Europe and the USA to provide facilities for the disabled and one should, at a minimum, become familiar with the relevant legislation and make sure that the site complies. In Australia, the first damages under such legislation were awarded to a blind user against the Sydney organizing committee of the Olympic games.

Any site with non-textual content risks being inaccessible to the disabled. For example, text can be read aloud by the machine for deaf people but pictures cannot be interpreted other than as pictures.

Icons are often culturally specific. Thus, they should always be labelled with text in the appropriate language. Consider for example the following misinterpretation of two icons that some others among us might have interpreted as ‘good’ and ‘bad’.

Figure 51.1 Erroneous stereotyping [refer to book]

Consider also that quite a few men suffer from colour blindness though it is rare amongst women.

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