On Fri, 2008-12-12 at 11:38 +0100, Patryk Zawadzki wrote: > On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 11:20 AM, Iain * <iaingn...@gmail.com> wrote: > > This brings up another point that I forgot. The actual difficulty of > > initially working out what a sound means. > > Because the sounds are arbitrary there is no expectation[1] on the > > part of the user that a certain action should create a sound > > Which means that whenever a user hears a sound they need to try to > > work out what it means. Was that swish new email or > > CD burning finished? The user closes the laptop lid and hears > > "lid-close" sound, thinks "what was that sound?" and opens the laptop > > to check. > > Actually all the sounds have (almost) complete context including full > text alternative for assistive technologies so you could either opt > for the screen reader to read the description aloud or just ask it > "what was that" from time to time. >
On OSX you can have dialog boxes announced to you which is pretty good. For instance "Excuse me, your computer needs your attention, system updates are available" the announcement happens after a delay, the basic timeline works like this; * Update icon bounces * After a short delay a sound is emitted * After a longer delay the announcement comes This is useful even to people who don't require assistive technologies BR, K _______________________________________________ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
