[luau] Sound on web- Was political sites

[aeg-inc at hawaii.rr.com]

"Has anyone ever found that sounds actually made a website better?"

Web pages can/should be developed to facilitate sound for disabled 
viewers.  For example making sure there's alternate text tags for 
graphic buttons, so that text to speech readers can tell someone what 
the button text is.

The short answer is, only sound with a purpose.  Ease of listening for 
blind readers.  Proper pronunciation for language learners. But rarely 
is sound on a website useful _unless requested by the user_.  The real 
question is, "Why haven't web designers learned that forced sound is 
bad for the user?"  

The answer, you knew this, is that the designers of those political sites 
designed not for we as constituents, but for the party folks, for whom 
pomp is de riguer.  Sadly, it is the modern condition, just as why 
managers buy proprietary while the engineers beg for open systems.

About web accessibility-

National arts and disability center (UCLA) on accessible web pages: 
http://nadc.ucla.edu/dawpi.htm

Web accessibility is by the way one area where Open Source is 
particularly useful- if a software doesn't offer a desired affordance, one 

may go and add it. (This is what happened with Linux and all those 
Japanese and Mandarin screen shots we started seeing in the past 
couple years).

Also- as a color blind web devotee- this is a public plea for catchy 
designers to please lay off the high contrast color sites!  It's such a drag

to be surfing along and some mostly pink or yellow website comes up- 
they appear blank to me.

best wishes-
rod g