News for Betty :
Last month I wrote about my 89-year-old neighbor Betty and her difficulty accessing news websites. The story was picked up by a website called Hacker News, which covers startup and tech news, and sparked a very interesting conversation about designing accessible websites for senior citizens.
One of the people who read the piece was a guy named Daniel who lives in Japan. He thought about what an accessible website would look like, registered the domain name newsforbetty.com, AND THEN CREATED THE WEBSITE FOR BETTY! It’s open source, so you can fork it and improve the experience for Betty. HOW AWESOME IS THAT?
Last night, I went over to Betty’s, and told her about all of this. First she said, “Does that mean I went viral?” Then we went to the site together. She loved it! She found it intuitive! She knew exactly what to do, without asking me — and she couldn’t get lost on a homepage. Click a story, read a story, go back, do it again. That’s it! It’s now a bookmark on her iPad screen. Thank you so much Daniel!
Mel
PS: The next newsletter will contain everyone’s amazing suggestions on how to improve jury duty. (There are so many! They are so good!) If you have one, send it over and I’ll send it back out to the group, which now numbers 1400 people from around the world.
PPS: This newsletter just makes me really happy.