Form Construction 04/20/09
Check this out:
In class Tuesday, we will continue working on the final elements of Exercise 7, the ice cream survey. I will clarify any issues you may have with the checkbox and radio form elements, especially the intricacies of the Name-Value pair and the unique ID for the label.
You may be interested in learning more about Fitts' law, as that is the chief conceptual underpinning of form field accessibility. Remember the Buchholz simple formulation of the law: "The smaller the target and the longer the distance necessary to travel to hit the target, the greater the likelihood that the target will be missed."
All of this means, simply enough, that, in designing forms, you will want to make the checkbox and radio button areas as large as possible; therefore, we need to include the label and the form element as the entire target, thereby increasing the probability that your respondent will easily be able to access all elements of your form.
If you have questions, just e-mail me at wbuchholz@bentley.edu. Feel free to comment on this announcement, or if you want to e-mail it, click on the little mail icon directly below. Note also that each announcement has a permanent link, available through the announcement title and posting date.
Labels: accessibility, check boxes, Fitts' law, Form Elements Accessibility Guide, name-value pair, radio buttons
posted by WJB at
Monday, April 20, 2009
|
0 Comments
| Links to this post
Chris Hass has more than 12 years of experience in human factors research, user interface design, and accessibility in the development of innovative user experience programs. Chris has unique expertise conducting human factors research with persons with physical and cognitive disabilities, a skill that strategically aligns with one of the center's key growth areas. He also brings extensive experience designing information architecture and interaction designs for consumer, medical, professional, and human service products. Prior to joining the Design and Usability Center, Chris worked at the American Institutes for Research, where he was a senior research scientist in the Human Factors Research and Design group. Previously, he served as a World Wide Web specialist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Mass.