Transparency is one of the hit words at the moments. Banks have to do it, we want our government to do it, Relationships would certainly be easier if we knew what the other person was thinking. In fact it would seem that the whole world is getting in on the act and rightly so. We want to know if we are being overcharged for the service or a corporate holiday that is disguised as a business trip. Of course transparency can be manufactured so that the customer only sees what the transparent business would like them to see, but it is hard to fool all the people all the time, As a writing style can reveal a lot about a person/company. It is very easy to get a marketing company to write a marketing blurb that has been researched with tens of thousands of pounds. Much harder but cheaper to get the MD writing a blog. That does depend though on the company. Jonathan Schwartz Sun Microsystems CEO blogs in a very transparent way. Allowing readers to see changes of thought by crossing out words in his blogs. While one would never be able to put that into a sales tender. His blog is one of the most read and influential in blogsphere. Blogs that I would be interested in reading would include Tony Blair in his present job as peace envoy, John Humphreys presenter of The Today program on Radio 4, Any major bank CEO, Putin, to a name a few. Who would you like to see?
Category Archives: Quality
Web 2.0 Saving Time
Implementing projects correctly
Last night on the radio I heard a comedian joking about how women want to know what men are thinking, I can imagine that a lot of men would claim to have no idea what women are thinking. In fact his question what people are thinking can go much further. Often when we do not understand one of the first questions that we ask is what are they thinking? Communication is more than a billion dollar industry. From phones to newspapers to meetings. In short each and every one of us spend more time communicating or trying to communicate than anything else. Why is it then that so many of us get it wrong?
I am not going to pretend to have the answer to that question. A friend of my recently commented that the process of writing clarifies the brain as to exactly what the situation/problem is. There is many a time that I have wondered what is going on in the company I work for. So imagine this. A company decides that it wants to improve a process. For example it wants to reduce software support to employees and educate them at the same time. A possible approach to this problem would be to organise meetings with different departments. Send out an email asking for ideas and feedback from employees. To organise and carry out this improvement it would require a small medium seized company at least one person to project manage, someone to sort out the information, someone to analyse the information, then more meetings to discuss the findings. Eventually you would have a recommendation that can be debated all over again. If by the end of this process there is still the will to implement it, you have truly done well. Of course there is no guarantee that your solution will work at all. How can web 2.0 deal with this?
Well imagine that you set out your vision on paper, and then allow people to comment. It is incredibly simple. Each user can see what issues have been raised and add comments if necessary. The project manager can modify and direct the discussion as the project evolves. This is clear accountable communication . Returning to the question about building a help desk, it allows every problem to be logged so that there is no repeat use of time to express the same points. One can even track the time involved producing accountability for budgeting future projects. Brilliant… if only everything was that simple I would not mind what anybody else is thinking.
W3C why it is so important on the internet
Presentation of content is just as important as the content. Regularly spending a couple of hours per a day surfing the internet for new content can become quite sore on the eyes. The number of non-compliant W3C sites is astounding. Why should a site even think about it? Well, there are two reasons:
1.The number of people that suffer from one form or another of disability is extraordinarily high. In this group you have to include sight, cognitive, physical, mental impairments etc…
2.In the UK it is now law that your site has to be accessible by all users. If you are providing a service and you fail to do this you can be fined. Even if the site is hosted in another country.
These reasons aside there is very little point in writing something if it cannot be understood by the people reading it. As it is becoming increasingly apparent, the fastest growing group of users on the internet are the silver surfers, and as you grow older your eyesight deteriorates. The question you have to ask yourself: Can you really afford to lose this group of customers through bad presentation?
Here are some tips from the WC3 website:
Although some people cannot use images, movies, sounds, applets, etc. directly, they may still use pages that include equivalent information to the visual or auditory content. The equivalent information must serve the same purpose as the visual or auditory content. Thus, a text equivalent for an image of an upward arrow that links to a table of contents could be “Go to table of contents”. In some cases, an equivalent should also describe the appearance of visual content (e.g., for complex charts, billboards, or diagrams) or the sound of auditory content (e.g., for audio samples used in education).
This guideline emphasizes the importance of providing text equivalents of non-text content (images, pre-recorded audio, video). The power of text equivalents lies in their capacity to be rendered in ways that are accessible to people from various disability groups using a variety of technologies. Text can be readily output to speech synthesizers and braille displays, and can be presented visually (in a variety of sizes) on computer displays and paper. Synthesized speech is critical for individuals who are blind and for many people with the reading difficulties that often accompany cognitive disabilities, learning disabilities, and deafness. Braille is essential for individuals who are both deaf and blind, as well as many individuals whose only sensory disability is blindness. Text displayed visually benefits users who are deaf as well as the majority of Web users.
Providing non-text equivalents (e.g., pictures, videos, and pre-recorded audio) of text is also beneficial to some users, especially nonreaders or people who have difficulty reading. In movies or visual presentations, visual action such as body language or other visual cues may not be accompanied by enough audio information to convey the same information. Unless verbal descriptions of this visual information are provided, people who cannot see (or look at) the visual content will not be able to perceive it.