Sight and Sound: Equivalent Alternatives for Auditory Elements

We began this chapter with the prime directive, the fact that good design requires equivalent alternatives to visual and auditory elements of Web pages. We discuss audio in greater detail in Chapter 13 when we examine multimedia applications, but a few words are necessary here as well.

The Web is an intensely visual medium, and within the past few years it has become increasingly noisy as well. It’s important to remember, however, not to depend on sound alone to deliver information. Millions of people who use the Web will not hear those sounds. This may be due to deafness or hearing impairments but may also result from lack of audio speakers (for example, many public computers in ...

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