The Intersection Metaphor
Web Enabled
By Mike Paciello
Recently, I visited the wonderfully designed Mullins Center at the University of Massachusetts. At one point, I came to a street intersection where the sidewalks on both ends and the intersection median were wheelchair accessible. The crosswalk signal lights included bright, blinking visual cues for the deaf and hard of hearing, while a ringing alerted the blind or visually impaired of their opportunity to cross.
Could the Web ever be so accessibly and considerately designed, I wondered. As a long time friend said to me:
I don't want you to recreate your Web site just because I'm blind. I'm not asking you to not make your site look great. I realize that's important. I just want to be able to access your information.
With the plethora of publishing tools, utilities, and plug-ins, you'd assume that achieving such accessibility would not be too difficult. However, as evidenced by the Sixth International World Wide Web Conference in Santa Clara this past April, accessibility is an issue not only for those with disabilities, but for other contingencies of Web users as well. While it's no longer true that "the blind can't use the Web because they can't read GUI interfaces" -- screen-reader applications allow blind users to interact quite successfully with a graphical user interface, and cool applications like the pwWebspeak nonvisual browser allow blind and low-vision users to surf using voice-output technology -- the number one Web-inaccessibility problem relates to design. The Web has become a graphic designer's dream and a usability engineer's nightmare.
