Comment on New BoM website has rolled out
Seagoon_@aussie.zone 5 days agoI’d say this one was pretty due.
Why is it due? What was wrong with the old one?
What does screen reader compatibility even mean? Whose screen? Mine? I use a lap top.
Who cares what the average user expects, it’s up to the smart people to set the standard, not the other way around.
EmilyIsTrans@aussie.zone 5 days ago
Screen reader. Like for blind people. Who need the screen read out to them. Verbally. By software. Whom the government should be considering while building digital services. See previous mention about “usability issues”.
I’m glad you consider yourself among the smart people. I haven’t worked with the designers on this particular project, but like most I’ve worked with before I would assume they’re also reasonably intelligent. They’ll understand, just like I’m sure you do, that a good interface is an intuitive one. We all have mental models of how we expect software to “feel”; how it should navigate, be structured, and just behave in general. Any time you break that model, you add friction as the user has to learn how your specific app behaves. Of course, there are sometimes good reasons to do so, but I would argue that the weather, which is generally considered a basic task, is not one of them. Therefore, updating their website to match common, modern, and well reasoned design patterns to make it more accessible to new users is reasonably justified.
That said, existing users of BoM already have a mental model of the website, and by updating it they’re breaking it. They’re essentially privileging the experience of new users. This is a trade off of all redesigns but, considering my previously mentioned issues with the old website, and their clear effort to maintain feature parity, I would argue that that is fair in this case.