Ordinary user in an extraordinary situation....

I caught my twitter fix on the bus today (yes wifi on the bus, sweet) and was reminded of an interesting way of categorising circumstances that require accessibility features and people who make use of them.

Alan Newell was using the concept of ordinary and extra ordinary to describe the user and their environment and how this affects there ability to interact with technology. For me this was a light bulb moment, accessibility has positive implications for every one and isn't some neish add-on at the end if there time and budget and it doesn't get in the way.

My experiences of tweet deck on a bouncing bus in reasonable (for dundee) sun light offered a fine example of an ordinary user in an extra ordinary situation. I have no particular difficulty in operating an array of computer tech at my desk. However in this situation I was able to make use of accessibility options, and tactics to allow me to cope with this extra ordinary situation.

Firstly an accessibility option for visually impaired users, the screen magnifier, lets me focus on what I'm doing. At my desk I have dual 23's and have a really messy desktop, focus and task switching are not an issue here. On the bus add into the mix the distraction of motion, lighting and ambient noise and a bit of help is useful. The magnifier does just this, larger more readable text and less distraction as I can literally focus on the element on the desktop I'm interested in and using at this moment in time.

The next thing is a tactic the developers should be aware of. I get on pretty well with my track pad, gestures for scrolling and such like do offer a rich and seamless interaction most of the time. This all goes out the window (almost literally) on a moving bus with temporary reduction in fine motor control. The answer is the keyboard. Solid tactile feedback and a binary input is whats needed, the suability and fine control of track pads is lost in the noise of unplanned motion on a bus. Tweet deck is not bad letting me scroll through the evenings happening with my arrow keys. So making your software genuinely keyboard accessible opens it up to a wider audience than you may think.

I hope it's not to tricky to flip this experience round and think about the extra ordinary user in an ordinary situation and how to accommodate them and promote access to the neat things you have made.