Challis Hodge’s UXblog

Very nice article on UXmatters by Pabini Gabriel-Petit. Part IV in her series on “Color Theory for Digital Displays” she describes how color can be used to ensure web sites and applications are accessible to people with color-deficient vision.

If you do not consider the needs of people with color-deficient vision when choosing color schemes for applications and Web pages, those you create may be difficult to use or even indecipherable for about one in twelve users.

A pill-sized brain chip has allowed a quadriplegic man to check e-mail and play computer games using his thoughts. The device can tap into a hundred neurons at a time, and is the most sophisticated such implant tested in humans so far.

In June 2004, surgeons implanted a device containing 100 electrodes into the motor cortex of a 24-year-old quadriplegic. The device, called the BrainGate, was developed by the company Cyberkinetics. Each electrode taps into a neuron in the patient’s brain.

The BrainGate allowed the patient to control a computer or television using his mind, even when doing other things at the same time. Researchers report for example that he could control his television while talking and moving his head.

I haven’t reviewed it and I don’t know what Nielsen Norman Group (NN/g) usability guidelines were used or how they were derived. But here it is, “LIFT-Nielsen Norman Group Edition,” a new software product that allows developers to check pages for compliance with usability guidelines as they code. It works with Macromedia Dreamweaver (4.0 or MX) on both Windows and Macintosh. LIFT NN/g checks to ensure that websites are compliant with the World Wide Web Consortium’s accessibility guidelines and Section 508 guidelines. It’s Jakob Nielsen in a box!