Argh. Ultimately that "devil's advocate" crap is just self-aggrandizing behaviour, plus it's lazy arguing. My students do this because they don't yet know how to engage with the argument that's being made, and think that if they throw up a bunch of their own counter-arguments it'll serve the purpose; it's sometimes hard, though, to tell if they honestly don't know or if they're just reverting to eight years old.
For an argument as stupid as "the web is for making money" there are a million comebacks ("so we should make it easier for everyone, don't you think?") but I think the best one might be the law of unintended consequences - making something easier for, say, people with limited vision can open a site to a whole new group of unanticipated users. Years ago, when they first started spending the money to put in sidewalk curb cuts, the usual Scrooges wanted to know "how many" wheelchairs would actually use them. When the engineers went back to do the use studies, they found people pushing strollers and walking small children as well as salespeople dragging briefcases, students dragging luggage, kids on skateboards and all sorts of other folks all found it much easier to use the intersections with curb cuts. Which, in turn, led to more pedestrian traffic and more customers for businesses. Making websites more accessible has the potential to do the same thing. Why would you want to say to *any* potential user/customer that they should go away & use another service after spending all those resources to attract them????
If, as he says, the web is for making money that seems counter-productive...
no subject
Date: 1 Oct 2013 11:44 am (UTC)For an argument as stupid as "the web is for making money" there are a million comebacks ("so we should make it easier for everyone, don't you think?") but I think the best one might be the law of unintended consequences - making something easier for, say, people with limited vision can open a site to a whole new group of unanticipated users. Years ago, when they first started spending the money to put in sidewalk curb cuts, the usual Scrooges wanted to know "how many" wheelchairs would actually use them. When the engineers went back to do the use studies, they found people pushing strollers and walking small children as well as salespeople dragging briefcases, students dragging luggage, kids on skateboards and all sorts of other folks all found it much easier to use the intersections with curb cuts. Which, in turn, led to more pedestrian traffic and more customers for businesses. Making websites more accessible has the potential to do the same thing. Why would you want to say to *any* potential user/customer that they should go away & use another service after spending all those resources to attract them????
If, as he says, the web is for making money that seems counter-productive...