Fw: Front Pages

Web design is currently very competitive at certain levels. To stay in
business (make a profit) means meeting a client's requests. Many businesses
moving onto the web have never worked with a designer before--their concept
of design is to walk into Office Depot and order logo number 63 for their
business cards. They also really don't understand the variety of
browsers/operating systems in use, and the restriction that places on design
possibilities. Many do want bleeding edge technology--they've done some
surfing, and they like the animation on website "A."  And any explanation is
quickly forgotten, when they're at dinner with their brother-in-law, who
wants to know why they've got such a booorrring web site (does anyone think
the response is "Why, I want a web site that is universally accessible!")
The Monday morning call is, "I'm moving my website over to company x,
they're going to make it more exciting."

Satisfying a client's requests comes before the concept of universal
accessibility. And if a client wants a website feature that means the site
doesn't meet the standard for universal accessibility, who will say no?

I would be interested in knowing the opinion of the people whose day job is
designing for businesses, compared to the opinion of the people who work at
a University, or who design for a hobby. Those groups operate under
different constraints.

*Important* This isn't intended to insult anyone/start a flame war. At any
given time, my company has 80-120 websites in development. I don't have
unlimited time to explain every issue to every client. However, website
development for the hobbyists I know isn't a profit issue--they spend time
on each website as they see fit.

Leslie Owen


-----Original Message-----
From: Ann Navarro <ann(at)webgeek.com>
To: Byer, Mark <mbyer(at)Carlson.com>; hwg-theory(at)hwg.org <hwg-theory(at)hwg.org>
Date: Saturday, August 29, 1998 2:54 PM
Subject: RE: Front Pages


At 05:26 PM 8/28/98 -0500, Byer, Mark wrote:
> In this
>case universal accessibility is restrictive and "less" than what is
desired.

Less than what is desired *by whom* and under what assumptions is that
desire measured?

Ann

---

Author of Effective Web Design: Master the Essentials
Buy it online! http://www.webgeek.com/about.html

Owner, WebGeek Communications          http://www.webgeek.com
Vice President-Finance, HTML Writers Guild http://www.hwg.org

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