Low-literacy users have different online behaviors than high-literacy users. They don’t scan, they read. It’s easier for them to miss important information that is outside of the normal text-areas. The good news? it’s easy to improve usability for low-literacy users without compromising the effectiveness of web sites for higher-literacy users. Read more at Jakob Nielsen’s excellent usability site, Alertbox, which also has good tips on usability for seniors.
Month: April 2005
hi – 24apr
I’m polishing my Simmons talk today. I give a few types of talks regularly, but the talks are never the same. They can be loosely grouped as follows:
- new technologies/ten tech tips for libraries
- the information poor/digital divide and technology in libraries
- social responsibiltiy and technology in libraries
Astute readers will recognize that, at their core, these talks all cover the same three topics with different weight given to each topic each time. Put another way they’re
- TECHNOLOGY, politics, libraries
- technology, politics, LIBRARIES
- technology, POLITICS, libraries
I like giving talks, and I’m happy that I now have the time to really do it right. If you’d like me to come talk to your library, your library association or your group of library fans, read my faq and drop me a line.
ALA Annual Wiki – by Meredith
Please check out the ALA Annual Wiki that Meredith has set up if you’re planning on attending the conference in Chicago in June. This is a great idea. There is already a lot of good information there, and if you know anything, feel free to add it. The more I get used to wikis through my work with Wikipedia and my own experiments [yes I had a wiki, no I don’t anymore, yes I will have one again] the more I get excited about the potential benefits of providing simple easy-to-learn ways for people to collaborate online.
webjunction has a blog
WebJunction has a blog. I mentioned them a few weeks back taking issue with some of their suggestions for smaller libraries and got a fairly nice note back from them encouraging direct feedback on things that could help them. Apparently they’re soliciting a lot of input in making some decisions about design and usability issues. If you use WJ at all, consider giving them your ideas. [technobib]
Salinas library not closing, minimal hours increased a wee bit
Thanks to people who cared, rallied, funded and hyped, the John Steinbeck Library in Salinas California will not only not be closing, but might even be able to offer a few extra hours over the bare-bones minimum that people were planning to settle for. [thanks lauren]