Comments on: Thoughts around universal access on mobile from Accessibility 2.0

By: Screen reader software usage shifts on desktop and mobile » iheni :: making the web worldwide

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:11:16 +0000

[...] some. And for me at least 2009 feels like the year that we all sat up and paid attention to the potential of mobile for people with disabilities. The Ms. Minogue Factor if you [...]

By: Will mobile innovate desktop browsing? | SMLXL - Engagement Marketing and Communication principles from Alan Moore

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 17:02:27 +0000

[...] thoughts on interface without interference (and here) – from Iheni – what you might call Userbility + [...]

By: The Tink Tank » Blog Archive » Accessibility 2.0

The Tink Tank » Blog Archive » Accessibility 2.0 — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 18:34:34 +0000

[...] Discussion focused on the challenges of building one web for everyone. Personalisation came through strongly as a potential way forward, with the thought that data from one original source could be tailored to suit an individual’s requirements. Bandwith concerns were raised when the suggestion of using CSS to control delivery of content specific content was made. It was also pointed out that many people use mobile sites out of preference on their desktops because of the perceived improvement in accessibility. Read Henny’s notes from the panel discussion: Thoughts around universal access on mobile. [...]

By: Isofarro

Isofarro — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 09:58:15 +0000

Hi Henny, yes these are mainly what we are seeing on the desktop. I have no idea about mobile – that’s something you could have a chat to Ricardo about tomorrow, he’s our mobile guru.

Maybe we can learn something from the XMPP/Jabber guys. Everyone using XMPP uses something that looks like an email as their identifier: username@jabberserverdomain. But for every device/client you have, each of those can be targetted specifically with some client identifier tagged on to the end of the jabber id, so something like exampleuser@example.com/home would be an IM client at home. Then preferences can be applied at the user level or at the device specific level – so you’d have a shorter contacts/friends list on a mobile than a desktop client. (cf: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensible_Messaging_and_Presence_Protocol#Decentralization_and_addressing )

I think this goes back to the concepts of global user profiles, with aliases/subdivisions for devices/clients/useragents. Maybe this is something to be done in conjunction with OpenId and aliases. Being able to configure both a personal preference and a device/browser specific preference.

By: iheni

iheni — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 09:35:27 +0000

Hi Mike – interesting points about personalisation and what you’ve seen over at Yahoo! – I’m going to factor this into my thinking as it’s important learning. Did you find this was in relation to desktop or mobile or both? I’m thinking that it may be that while we don’t see personalisation taking off in the desktop context as expected that it really becomes relevant in the mobile context. From what you’re saying it seems that there needs to be substantial work in making it intuitive, quick and easy in the mobile context.

I think we are also more than in agreement with your statement that “The mobile and non-mobile websites should just be views on the same data-model” too.

Agreed on the widget front – these are a huge step forward and cut out a lot of the problems people have around using the mobile browsers, paying for time online and so on.

I think Adrian’s got some good points about personalisation and how it works fro him. It obviously hits the right note but I wonder (given Mike’s comments) how we can ensure that everyone finds this easy to use. For me it comes back to the same thing which is making it easy to set up and use and I’m not sure we have a sure way of doing that yet.