My six-year-old daughter was playing on Strudel Doodle this morning. It’s basically an online drawing application where users can submit their drawings for a prize.
So my daughter arrived at the page and clicked on “GO DOODLE!”.
Then she clicked on the redundant “START DOODLING” button on the following page.
Then she clicked on the “START DOODLING!” button on the next page.
When she was done drawing, she clicked on the “SUBMIT DOODLE” button. Doing so asked her to fill out a form.
The first question asked for her initials. At first she was going to enter her first and last initial. I told her that it doesn’t say that; it asks for her initials. She started to enter all four of her initials (she has two middle names), but it forced her to enter no more than three. She kept hitting “Shift+S” to get that last initial in and couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t going in. There was no indication anywhere that the form would only accept three characters, nor was there any notification that she was entering more characters than was allowed. If I wasn’t there to tell her the problem, she wouldn’t have realised what it was. I told her to enter her first and last initials.
The rest of the form was pretty easy to use. Before she pressed the “Continue >>” button, however, she read the reminder that stated the contest is open to children 8–12. she thought that meant she couldn’t save her doodle. Despite the fact that the button had said “submit doodle” she interpreted that to mean she would save it by pressing on it. Now the reminder seemed to say she could not save it because she was not between eight and twelve.
I told her that since it allowed her to enter her birth year (1999 instead of 1997), then she should be able to press the “continue” button. When she pressed it, however, a red pop-up window came up with a warning sound and the words” Sorry! Please enter a three-letter nickname.” She had no idea why it was telling her to enter a nickname when it never asked her for one. She had no idea where to enter this nickname. I told her it was telling her she couldn’t use just her first and last initials. She needed to arbitrarily choose between her second initial and third initial. She needed to determine which of her two middle names she preferred more.
She gave up and simple pressed “Back to Doodler”.
A website for children that is not useable by children, hmmm, that’s not nice. It would seem that the target groups for accessibility initiatives should be expanded to include children (where appropriate). I read somewhere that Microsoft (a couple of years ago) contracted a study on accessibility and it found that 57% of the population benefit from accessibility initiatives which is a larger number than those for whom accessibility is generally targeted. Maybe that number should be reconsidered.
Well, like most people in the world people just want to make money so they whip through the making of their programs not even caring whether or not it’s being able to be fully used properly. I think there should be a regulator for the net and websites.
As for your daughter is concerned, my friend thinks she is very smart and thank god she has a parent who takes time to teach her that type of stuff. High five for that. You take care and remember there will always be stupid people.
LMAO
Bye for now.