pixeldiva tagged with usability

A tiny tip that makes testing websites easier

When I worked at RNIB, I changed my default desktop colour scheme because the default windows scheme gave me headaches and eye strain. The department of unintended consequences then stepped in and handed me a neat way to know whether a site was missing it’s body background colour without having to check any code, because it changed the default browser background from white to muddy grey.

Since moving to using a mac, I’ve grown used to the white default background in the browser, and this morning, had a moment of panic when I realised that I wasn’t sure if I’d specified the background colour in the templates I’d built (and which were delivered to the client) last week.

I had, of course, but I realised in that moment that it’d have been much easier if I went into the settings and changed the background colour away from white (to grey, but you could choose whatever makes you happy), just to avoid that kind of panic in future. So that’s what I did.

Disappointingly, the first site to fall at that particular hurdle was the Firefox default Google search home page.

Notes from Bristol Usability Group talk by Andrew Arch

I don’t know whether it’s just coincidence, but since I’ve been working in Bristol, there seem to have been quite a high proportion of geek events happening locally, which as well as being interesting, have given me the opportunity to meet some local folk.

Last night was the turn of the Bristol Usability Group, which I was completely unaware of until Joe and Laura (separately) told me about it via twitter, correctly thinking that it’d be right up my street.

It was.

Last night’s topic was Designing for Old(er) People and Andrew Arch, Web Accessibility and Ageing Specialist for the Web Accessibility Initiative: Ageing Education and Harmonisation Project (WAI-AGE) was presenting.

I’ve known Andrew for a few years now, since he worked for Vision Australia doing similar stuff to what we did at RNIB, and hadn’t had a chance to speak to him in a long time, so quite apart from hearing his presentation, it was really good to get a chance to catch up with him. Especially since he was at the Standards.Next event I was at on Saturday but I didn’t get a chance to talk to him then.

I took quite a few notes during Andrew’s talk, because he gave a lot of information that I wasn’t aware of, including lots of useful and interesting statistics, and assuming I can read my handwriting (not an absolute certainty, and the longer I get from having written them, the less likely it gets) I thought I’d transcribe (and share) what I wrote down.

It was an information packed presentation (and discussion afterwards) and I couldn’t physically write any faster and so I know I missed some stuff, so any errors or omissions are mine alone.

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