I spend a lot of time on real estate websites. I make (sometimes numerous) daily visits and average about 7 hours a week for personal use (I’ll no doubt regret saying that). So Google Maps (And let’s just be honest here, that’s all it is: a mapping device with a couple of filters) just isn’t the right tool “for me” at the moment. That’s not to say it isn’t useful, I just doubt it’s going to “badly hurt Australian websites“. While it does appear to be good at aggregating information usually found in the top three Australian real estate websites (in my case), that’s about all it does for now.

I say ‘at the moment’ and ‘for now’ because who knows what they intend to do in the future. But let’s put this in perspective, Google isn’t exactly known for fantastic User Experiences. Right now, the most likely scenario for me may be to use it as a ready made RSS feed, one that just happens to have a few simple filters.

While it’s true, real estate sites have appropriated a very useful (Google) mapping tool to improve the user experience of their online offerings, Goggle has scraped a huge amount of content and merely added a couple of basic filters. Right now it isn’t even possible to rank property prices in ascending/descending order.

In actual fact, Google Maps is a pretty lousy research tool. Even fundamental nationwide searches to identify properties using price as a filter can be frustrating. Search results are inaccurate and clearly the result of non-human input. Who would have thought you could get a 42 sq. house in the outer Melbourn suburb of Berwick for a single buck (AUD$1)? As much as my inner slum lord wanted to, it took me about as long as it does to copy and paste the url into a browser to realise you can’t… $1 or $1.1 MILLION. What’s the difference?

And that’s another of the many frustrations I experienced on the site. Way too many clicks and C+V’s to view a property.

The worst part is, I just don’t trust it. And when I say trust, I don’t mean I think they’re tracking all my mouse clicks or they’ve got a dodgy URL (and they do). I just don’t trust that I’m getting all the available data. If I search for Darlington, for example, and get results for Alexandria and Ultimo (both two suburbs away), I do wonder what gems I might have missed. Moving across to Annandale, it tells me there are “about 1,964 (properties for sale)”. Doubtful, considering it has a population of just over 8,000 people and is about 1 square KM in size. But, I could be wrong.

In a nut shell, it’s a cute little RSS feed, but it certainly won’t replace my good old fashioned email alerts and hard core physical dredging… I don’t mind working for my food, but I do want something in return. Having said all that though, I’ve just found an interesting place that promises a 7+% return p/a… so in hind sight…it does show *some* promise, perhaps…

I really hope to see a wide cross section of the Sydney web community at this event. User Experience is something that many more of us are aware of in our work these days, and we have a couple of brilliant presentations that will be of interest to anyone working on the web.

With this party, we hope to relaunch regular UPA events, leading with UX topics that are challenging, accessible and of interest to the wider web community.

The event is open to everyone but rsvp’s are essential.

When?

Wednesday 1st July 2009
6pm for 6.30pm till 10pm

Where?

Level 3, Blacket Hotel
70 King Street
Corner of King & George Streets

What’s happening?

1) Prizes and give-aways including a free ticket to UX Australia, as well as an iPod shuffle from Web Directions and discount codes for both conferences on the night.

2) Guest speaker: Dr. Christopher Khalil from News Interactive
The Future of HCI: Intelligent User Interfaces as Agents of Change
In this talk Christopher Khalil will discuss some trends in HCI and what they mean to us as User Experience Practitioners. Is the end nigh for Interaction Design as we know it? Will we all end up being lawyers rather than designers?

3) Guest speaker: Cameron Adams (The Man in Blue) from Google
Google Wave: Designing Communications
Google Wave is a new tool for communication and collaboration on the web, coming later this year.

How much?

Full members* – Free (please bring your membership number)
Associate members and friends of the local Sydney UPA Chapter – $10

*Full members of the UPA Chapter are full members of the parent body Usability Professionals’ Association (http://www.upassoc.org/).

More information on the event and a link to the RSVP are on the UPA Sydney blog post.

A reading group I’m a member of was discussing our latest book, People of the Book, by Geraldine Brooks. As usual, I hadn’t finished reading it and was surprised to hear that there was reference to a deaf character. Having studied and worked within the deaf community for ten years, I was interested in what the other readers thought about the character.

However, within just a few minutes, the discussion had denigrated to a disagreement as to whether or not deaf, Deaf and Deaf-blind people are, by definition, psychologically impaired. Being in such disbelief at what I was hearing, I tried to clarify what was being said. Surely there wasn’t a 30-something psycho-analyst beside me saying that Deafness and blindness naturally affect the psychology of a person merely by virtue of the fact that the eyes and ears are connected to the brain!

Of course there are deaf and blind people who have psychological illnesses, but to say that it is because they are deaf or blind is ridiculous.

Sixteen hours later I sit here writing this post, trying to understand how I might have misunderstood what was being said. But its offensiveness is unabated and continues to anger me. It is opinions such as these that continue to disable people of these communities. Misinformed ‘professionals’ who have no real knowledge of what they speak, who have never met nor worked with the people they describe, who make such ludicrous statements, are of course entitled to their opinion. But such ignorance! Such ignorance!

Ignorance such as this will never be considered bliss in my world.

There’s another Social UPA planned for next Thursday, June 4th. And in case you’re wondering, you don’t have to be a UPA member to attend, if you’re working in the area of UX or interested in it, come along. It’s all about catching up, meeting, mixing and talking shop.

We’ll be holding it in the same place, upstairs at the Art House Hotel, on Pitt street, Sydney, from 5:30pm.

One thing I’d really like to mention is that Raymond Van Der Zalm, the current President of the Sydney UPA chapter will be there.

Elections for the positions of President, Vice President, Secretary and Treasurer are being held for Sydney UPA in June, so if you’re at all interested in taking a more active role, come along to Supa next Thursday and ask Raymond all the tough questions! He *loves* it!

See you at Supa!

Taking 11 days off at this time of year to sit in the cinema is a bit of a fantasy really. But there are three movies I’d really like to see this year, and I think you might like them too.

A Good Man

An Australian documentary that illustrates the loving relationship of Chris and his wife Mary, who suffered a massive stroke 14 years ago, leaving her unable to walk or talk.

An Inverell farmer with the usual worries about the weather and the bank, Chris comes up with a bizarre solution to their financial woes – a brothel.

Saturday 6 June, 2:00 PM, 80 minutes
Greater Union George Street,Sydney

Blind Loves

A Slovakian film that combines documentary and fiction to depict a variety of scenarios in which people who are blind fall in love.

Miro and Monika are in love, but her parents disapprove not of his blindness but his Romany roots. As a hairdresser snips, a pregnant woman reveals anxieties and hopes. We meet Peter and Iveta, sitting listening to ski jumping – and in a wonderful sequence imagining a walk along the seabed.

Sunday 7 June, 12:30 PM, 77 minutes
Dendy Opera Quays, Sydney

The Horse Boy

A North American film that tells the story of autism, family and an attempt to treat the condition with traditional Mongolian spiritual healing. It sounds like a bit of a stretch for me, and probably the one I’d most likely miss if I had to pick one.

Journalist Rupert Isaacson and his psychology professor wife, Kristin, are struggling to cope with their autistic son, Rowan. The only time he’s calm is when he’s on horseback. They decide to travel to Mongolia, a land famed for its horses and shamans, to see if traditional healing can help. Their journey, intercut with footage of their life in Texas and testimony with autism experts, is both a spiritual and emotional rollercoaster.

Sunday 7 June, 2:00 PM, 93 minutes
Greater Union George Street, Sydney

So if I had to pick just one, my money’s on The Good Man. It sounds like a raw and engaging film that is bound to warm my heart. I’ll be seeing that one, for sure.

I heard about a Dinner in the Dark event being held sometime last year. It sounded like fun and definitely something different to what I normally did when eating out. The customer reviews were shocking though, with people commenting that they’d waited hours in the dark for even an entrée, that things had been stolen and bottoms pinched. Not much of a success at all.

But when I saw that Vision Australia were hosting a Dinner in the Dark as a fund raiser, I was keen to look into it again. Unfortunately for me, though not for them, tomorrow’s event is already sold out.

It sounds like a great fundraiser though, so if I can get a seat at the next one I’m there!

It got me thinking that it would be great to have a purely social usability gathering, where we could all catch up and get back in touch offline.

We came up with the event name, Underground Usability Professionals Association, or UUPA. But unfortunately, as Erietta was quick to point out, the acronym has already been assumed by another organisation :( [if you're wondering, it's worth a look!]

We then came up with the Blackmarket Usability Meetup, which Pat considered for half a second, until he realised BUM probably wasn’t appropriate.

So here we are, two days out, without a name. Not to worry.

Social UPA!

This is simply a casual after work get together for User Experience people and friends… No microphones, no projectors, no slideshows.

And you don’t need to be a member of the UPA, but interest in User Experience would be good.

Where and when?

Friday April 3rd, 5:00pm onwards
Art House Hotel
275 Pitt Street, Sydney
Upstairs

Come and catch up with some old and new friends!

Can you make it? Let us know and spread the word! I’m really looking forward to it ;)

Lisa

Initially I was worried that over time I’d lose touch with the language, culture and connection I had as I moved to an online environment. So it’s very cool to find myself in a place where I’ve been able to connect such diverse professions into something deeper than either could have been on their own.

Good things come to those who wait

Fingers crossed, I’ll be presenting a panel at South by South West next March with two friends I greatly respect and have the huge honour of working with through WaSP’s International Liaison Group: Henny Swan and Glenda Simms.

The panel is called Aging, Cognition & Deafness: The Quirky Corners of Web Accessibility, and this is what we want to say:

Bored with accessibility? Over AJAX, ARIA and yet another Jaws demo for dummies? Struggling to find a challenge in checklists? Join us in discussing the quirky corners of web accessibility where we’ll look at technical approaches to aging, deafness, cognitive disabilities and more.

During the panel we hope to cover questions such as:

• How does deafness impact on access to online information?
• Are subtitles enough to provide accessible content to the deaf?
• What techniques can I apply to make my site more accessible to the deaf?
• What sort of research has been done around people with multiple disabilities?
• Which WCAG criteria do I need to be aware of?
• Are there different considerations in user testing sites with deaf/aged/cognition users?
• Why are clinical cognitive disabilities less important than functional cognitive disabilities in web design?
• What design techniques can improve the usability of online forms for older users?
• Can rich media projects like SecondLife be accessible?
• How could I increase the readability of a web page for a person with dyslexia?

If you think it sounds interesting, give us your vote… Even if you can’t make it over to Austin next year, hopefully it’ll ensure I do ;)

The premiere of this film was at last January’s London Deaf Film Festival. The film went on to win a Clin d’Oeil European Video Award in Paris, and last weekend won best foreign film voted by the audience at the Viittomakielinen filmifestivaali, a deaf film festival in Finland.- Via Grumpy Old Deafies

I’d love to know what you think of it…

(Length of film: 6 minutes)

Yes there are some helpful tools available, but many times it’s a matter of looking at the code, the interface or the content and evaluating a site manually. Sometimes things are so painfully obvious, it takes half a nanosecond to see that there’s a problem and wow, it’s so big it’s a joke.

Given that it’s 2008, most of these sites are around ten years old. But every now and then there’s a new kid on the block and, well… don’t you just wish someone had told them boy bands died out in the 90’s…?

Three months ago I was sent a link to the relaunched UTS Interactive Multimedia course site. I’ll give you the link in a second, but before I do, let me issue this warning: If you suffer from seizures, don’t go there sister.

The Home page has been designed with an “interesting” Flash animation that strobes colour at a rate I’m guessing is much faster than 3 blinks per second.

It absolutely astounds me that a design like that has made it into a redesign in 2008. Worse still, I emailed the department as soon as I saw it and advised them that the flashing seemed quite a high rate and pointed them to the appropriate WCAG checkpoint 7.1, a Priority 1 issue. Even in WCAG 2 this is a Level 1 failure (success criteria 2.3.1).

Unfortunately nothing has been done in the last three months. Can a Flash animation be that important that it is retained, despite the fact that it has the potential to induce seizures in site users? And what message is this sending students of The Interactive Multimedia course?

The Trouble with Tools

I’ve yet to find a web tool that is able to measure the flicker rate of a .swf file. This is a problem. In conducting accessibility reviews, it’s usually obvious when a flicker rate is unsafe, but it’s always better if you can provide evidence. With Gifs it’s easy as there are a number of good tools around that can conduct a flicker test. But with Flash files, you need the .fla file to check frame rates. So in a situation like the one I’ve just described, without the source file, it’s pretty difficult to get an accurate measure.

A Picture Tells a Thousand Words…

I’m probably not doing myself any favours in writing this post. I’m three subjects off completing my Masters of Interactive Multimedia at UTS, so criticising the department’s new website isn’t the smartest thing I’ve done this week. But it’s clearly not the smartest thing they’ve done this year either.

I’m completely astounded that it made it into the design in the first place. I know the people involved in the redesign and it amazes me that they either don’t know or don’t care. Including a design feature like that says so much about the departments knowledge or position on website accessibility.

But as they say, a picture tells a thousand words, so how many words is a flickering Flash animation worth?

Related Links

UTS Graduate Courses in Interactive Multimedia

An introduction to the W3C’s Mobile Web Best Practices

Run by the W3C’s Mobile Web Initiative, the course runs for four weeks from May 26 to June 30 and provides lectures and hands on exercises for anyone wanting to learn more about designing and developing mobile friendly, accessible web content.

More information can be found on the course overview page, including a course outline, instructor details and other important stuff.

If you think you might be interested, check out the free sample course or go straight in and register.

Places are limited to the first 100 people, so if this is your area, don’t leave it too long to register.

I’ll be there, will you?

Related Posts

The Open Letter Initiative and the Mobile Web

Update

All places in the course have been filled, they went quickly, and I’m really happy to see 15 Australians on the list. So it will be interesting to see if we’re able to build a bit more momentum around building for an accessible mobile web. I hope so!

The Text Accessibility Plan (TAP) was designed with input from the community and provides more affordable access to communication services that the deaf and hearing impaired are likely to want.

For $40 USD, iPhone TAP customers will recieve:

• Unlimited SMS messages
• Unlimited data usage (email and web)
• $.40 per minute pay-per-use voice
• Visual VoiceMail

As AT&T are the exclusive providers of iPhone data services in The US, it’ll be interesting to see what Telstra Optus (thanks Jim!) and any of the other potential providers come up with when the iPhone is released in Australia this June.

Overall, it looks like a pretty reasonable deal, but I’m left wondering whether or not Apple will come out with an expensive hands free device / iPhone stand so that the Deaf can actually sign into it when video calls become available. We’ll have to wait and see…

The Apple site also provides some information on current iPhone accessibility features as well as a (pdf) Voluntary Product Accessibility Information document with more detailed accessibility information, including iPhone TTY access.

UPDATE
In order to qualify for the AT&T plan, the customer must submit an (pdf) application form which must be certified. The form states:

Certification of disability is required to process iPhone TAP applications. Applications received without certification will not be considered for enrollment in the iPhone TAP rate plan.
Certification of Disability Instructions:

A certifying agent must be a qualified health care professional, audiologist or hearing health professional, speech or language therapist/specialist, representative of an institution, agency or non-profit 510c3 organization actively engaged in work in the disability area specified by the applicant. A certifying agent must have direct knowledge or documentation of the applicant’s condition or functional limitation. Examples of certifying agents include licensed physicians and/or surgeons operating in the scope of their licenses, Vocational Rehabilitation Agency Counselors, Teachers, Audiologists, credentialed Therapists, Directors of independent living centers, or local, state, or national chapter presidents of associations of/for persons with disabilities including but not limited to: The National Association of the Deaf, Hearing Loss Association of America, AG Bell, Association of Late-Deafened Adults or Telecommunication for the Deaf, INC.

In a strange twist of fate, I’ve been invited to present at the Web Directions Gov08 Conference on May 22nd, which isn’t an IA Cocktail Hour event, but I’m sure there’s going to be some of the same crowd there. And surprise surprise! There’ll be lots of Fun, Alcohol, Learning and Canberra there too.

I’ll be presenting something on Accessibility and the User Experience, a talk based on the one I gave at Web Directions South 07… but better and more interesting, funnier and well, if Cameron Adams is in the room, there might even be a re-run of last years hilarity where he fell asleep during my presentation! Only this time *I will* have a camera ready.

Web Directions Government is a full day two track conference (May 19), plus an optional extra day of workshops (May 20). Presentations will focus on the concepts, technologies and techniques for meeting the challenges of eGovernment:

• José Manuel Alonso (W3C) – eGovernment Lead
• Robert Hoekman Jr (Miskeeto) – Interaction design and user experience
• Lisa Herrod – Usability and accessibility
• Scott Gledhill (News Digital Media) – Real world web standards
• Sebastian Chan – Social media and government (workshop)
• Cameron Adams – Frontiers of Javascript (workshop)
• Jason Ryan (NZ State Services Commission) – Government 2.0
• Jenny Telford (Australian Bureau of Statistics) – Opening government data
• Matthew Hodgson (SMS) – Social computing for knowledge management
• Ralph Douglas (AGIMO) – GovDex for secure online collaboration
• Patrick Lee (News Digital Media) – Javascript with legacy systems
• Andrew Kesper (ABC Online) – Ajax for dry data

It’s all very exciting! I’ve only ever been to Canberra once before, and never to present. I’m really, really looking forward to seeing all my Canberra friends on their home turf for a change… it’s going to be fun!

It’s a real honour to be presenting with such a smart group of local UX people as well as getting to meet a few new faces from O/S.

I’m particularly keen to have a quiet word with Andy Budd too. Not so much to do with UXie stuffs though. You see the last time we met was at an after party at SxSW in Austin, Texas. Within the first minute of talking to him, I choked, had a coughing fit and had to excuse myself… Yes I was sober. But talk about embarrassment! I looked like an alcoholic with TB. So I’m looking forward to representing in a better light this time…

I’m also looking forward to meeting Robert Hoekman Jr, not only because I’ve been reading his posts on the IxDA mail list for ages, but also because he’s a ‘Jr’… and I’ve never met one of those before. I’m wondering what the difference between ‘Jr’ and ‘the II’ is too. I’ll keep you posted, don’t worry about that.

But overall it’s just going to be a fun event and I’m really rapt to be presenting along side some great local friends and all round smart people.

Not only that, Melbourne is my home town, I can wear black on black and not look gothic, and it’s at the Melbourne Town Hall – what a brilliant venue.

So just in case you’re not sure, check out the line up… it’s got all areas covered:

• Andy Budd (Clearleft) – Interaction design and usability
• Robert Hoekman Jr (Miskeeto) – User experience evangelist
• Lisa Herrod – User testing
• Emily Boyd (Remember the Milk) – Ajax techniques for great user experiences
• Cameron Adams – Frontiers of Javascript (workshop)
• Donna Maurer – Getting content right
• Jackie Moyes (News Digital Media) – Turning research into products
• Oliver Weidlich – Mobile web user experience
• Steve Baty – Analysing research data
• Mathew Patterson (Campaign Monitor) – Designing for email

Hope to see you there… Do you think you can make it?

So consider this a little bit of user research on my part – Humour me if you have the time ;)

Where do you live and what do you do for work?

Tell me something about you that’s too unique and special to blend into a generic persona?

What did you have for dinner last night?

What makes you happy?