Chapter 14. Usability and Accessibility

Once upon a time I worked in a large corporation in the (at that time) novel capacity of a usability specialist. I had a hard time of it. For one thing, the very idea of building systems whose behaviors conformed to common standards was novel. PC software was gradually emerging from the prehistory of the DOS command line and character-based user interfaces into the comparatively modern world of Windows. In those days the use of a graphic user interface per se was deemed to make a program user-friendly. Often repurposing an application for Windows involved literally presenting the character-based interface, together with its bespoke key controls, into a window. I frequently had conversations with developers ...

Get Learn Xcode Tools for Mac OS X and iPhone Development now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.