Fox News (yes) covers Massachusetts’ decision to adopt open document formats in its government:

The policy also fails to consider accessibility by citizens and state employees with disabilities who rely on assistive technologies. Several such technologies, including screen readers and speech recognition, are not readily supported by applications that use OpenDocument formats. In commentary submitted to the Massachusetts Information Technology Division, the Bay State Council of the Blind and individuals with vision impairments strongly opposed the proposed policy.

State employee Sharon Strzalkowski wrote, “We have worked long and hard to get the computer access we now enjoy, and it would cause much harm to go to this new and inaccessible system.”

(Did “state employee Sharon Strzalkowski” write that on government time using government equipment?)

A file format isn’t a “system” and cannot be intrinsically accessible or inaccessible. It can contain accessibility features. Your computer hardware is a system that can be inaccessible. You the blind person are under no obligation to use a Windows computer system.

If Strzalkowski is trying to say that only Microsoft could ever produce any kind of accessibility, she needs to get out more. Let me quote myself here: “The assumption seems to be that blind people only ever or only can or only must use Windows.” If you think Windows is your only option because that used to be true, well, welcome to the 21st century.

Groups that help natives and homeless and underhoused people in this town sure have lousy type on their vehicles.

Arial is, as ever, a favourite:

Na Me Res is not, in fact, a phrase in an aboriginal language of any kind. It’s an initialism of sorts derived from Native Men’s Residence. (I confirmed that fact.) The phrase just sounds Cree or whatever. (Do you have a mental image of an identifiable Indian male voice breathily pronouncing those syllables?)

As such, it is like a white person wearing a headdress. Or is it like naming a Chinese fast-food chain Ho Lee Chow? I suppose it is untenable to level any kind of criticism at Na Me Res, since a native group is making fun of its own people rather than whites making fun of natives. I guess they get a pass because, self-evidently, a minority cannot stereotype itself.

Arial is also popular on the giant Suburban driven around town by another agency, Anishnawbe Health Services:

But if you look elsewhere on that vehicle, you find Novarese Italic, which is in fact Italian:

But of course Novarese (can you pronounce it?) looks like eagle feathers or some such nonsense, so it makes sense in an “aboriginal” context.

This isn’t Cherokee or Inuktitut; you’re stuck using the white man’s orthography. I know that causes offense, but I want you to show better taste anyway.

As mentioned previously, NLGJA is clueless about the Web. As a journalistic followup, I checked the coverage of its own conference.

1. The article on Weblogs was of minor interest and indicated that John Aravosis’s charm and panache in person are consistent with what he presents in E-mail. (Perhaps that’s because this “blog” session was as bad as the other ones he attends? A later panel “was the first that I felt was well done and actually interesting and worthwhile.”)

2. Coverage of writing online and for print contained these self-incriminating statements:

   Out.com had problems using the Internet effectively for market research, [Bruce] Shenitz confessed: “Our site had a few too many whistles and bells, and there wasn’t a non-Flash version available. That was a mistake.”

   And your concern there was market research? Today, Shenitz’s site has 810 validation errors.

   He also warns against using the fad of the minute for news media. As an example, podcasting, the process of recording audio and allowing download to MP3 players. “When someone says, ‘Ooh, podcasting, we gotta do it,’ I ask, what are we going to do?”

   I dunno… live in the 21st century?

My digital/analogue watch has finally died, forcing me to dig through piles of old gear (you wouldn’t believe the cables, mice, trackballs, pedals, handsets, headsets, and other detritus I’ve got here) to locate my old Swatchen. Yes, I had a bit of an otaku. That could be the only possible explanation for my rare Beach Virgin Swatch:

I only ever wore it for special occasions (like dates with 8s), and after ten years, the battery still works.

I have here a curious paper by Parush et al., “Impact of Visual Layout Factors in Performance in Web Pages: A Cross-Language Study.” The researchers attempt to generalize from user-interface research on application software and what little research there is on Web sites. The latter will be familiar to standardistas: Grids are common; layout affects performance in actual usage; information design is applicable to Web sites; adding more graphics does not necessarily help; distracting graphics are harmful. [continue with: The role of alignment in Web design →]

Chip Kidd interviews Milton Glaser (links added):

Glaser

[…] [A]s a designer what you can do is –since your role is to communicate ideas to the larger culture – you can use that role to not communicate those ideas you basically don’t feel are healthy for people. I did that Road to Hell thing. Did you ever see that in the AIGA Journal?

Kidd

Yes, though I’m a bit fuzzy on it.

– It’s just a series of questions about what you’re willing to do, starting with things that are very benign, like making a package look larger on a shelf. And then ending with contributing to a person’s death if they use the product that you advertise, and everything sort of in between. Because that is really the issue – what are you willing to do as part of your life as a designer when you are an intermediary between an audience and a client? Is your job simply to respond to everything the client wants, or do you say, “I have a personal responsibility, my sense as a citizen, to make some judgments about the implications of what I’m saying to people.”

– Do you mean in terms of, say, taking on a cigarette company as a client?

– Yes, sure. But it’s more complicated than just cigarettes – that’s always used as a kind of clear demonstration, because killing people is not something you want to be involved in. But there are all kinds of other more complex ethical decisions that are intrinsically difficult to figure out, the nature of ethics being that there is no clarity on every issue – you have to make an essential decision about where you want to be in the world.

– My favorite contradiction with that is: Yes, but I just love Raymond Lowey’s Lucky Strike package, and I wouldn’t want to be without it.

– Are you a smoker?

– No.

– That’s why.

– [Laughter] Countless times I’ve tried to start, and it just never took. But just as decorative objects, cigarette packages can be so beautiful. At least those of a certain era.

– Well, that’s why you discover in the world of advertising for instance, and to some degree in graphics, the focus is always on aesthetics, not on meaning, right?

– Mmm-hmm.

– So you get an award for doing a beautiful package, but without any discussion of the consequences of using the product, because that was not something you’re supposed to consider. After all, design is concerned with beauty, not with what happens when somebody uses the product they advertise. I think it’s a very individual issue, and people who are overly self-righteous who use this as a device to beat up on others are not very admirable. But I do think it’s an issue of your own sense of how you want to be in the world.

(NOW WITH UPDATE)   According to reports, “Laura” Ashley MacIsaac lives downtown, is bulimic, has had dysentery, has stopped smoking pot, and has taken up drink. (A mere two years ago, I watched him, glassy-eyed and badly in need of exfoliation, on Jawbreaker telling us that the first and only time he ever had a drink he ended up cutting his hand and leaving a permanent scar.) [continue with: Troll →]

Not.

I agree with Michael Brady et al. (subscription required, but adequately excerpted below):

I loathe Arial. I think it’s a crappy variant of Helvetica, flying just below the radar surveillance of the copyright-infringement patrol. I get involuntary glottal stoppages when I see the terminals of the round letters, the doofus dormer at the top of the lowercase t, and other infelicities.

So I am amazed that I have fallen in love with Arial Rounded. I do
like the face, her alluring curves, the seductive way her parts join
together […]

She’s also a very legible typeface under awkward conditions. Stuff like telephone pole signage that has to be read from passing cars works very well in Arial Rounded…. Arial Rounded’s lack of sharp corners may be the reason it works better: these suppress diffraction effects at greater distances.

Indeed. It works surprisingly well on this Indian-music poster.

Adorable Tom Coates used it, too, and quite adequately, in an adorable presentation at the E-Government seminar that the Andy Budd and others attended (me too):

Literally.