redundant information: how annoying is it?

[deborah]

Hey, gang. This is a question both for screenreader users and for non-screenreader users, because the answer will affect both groups.

I'm looking at bug 2083, which deals with redundant information on sticky posts. The core of the problem is this: if you have a sticky entry which always appears at the top of your journal, it gets a special icon (a star) before the name of the post. The star icon has the alt text "[sticky entry]". Additionally, the style system by default prepends "Sticky: " to the subject line of the entry.

It's been pointed out that this provides redundant information to screenreader users or anyone else who is relying on alt text instead of images. The problem is that the subject line text is configurable in the style system (appropriately!), so it can't be guaranteed to stay there.

One option is to remove the alt text from the star icon, but that doesn't work if the user configures their style to remove the text that says "Sticky: " from the subject line.

One option is to remove the default "Sticky: " from the file system, so that the default state of the sticky post is not to say the word. This would remove the redundancy for screenreader users, but I think it would come at a cost. The star icon isn't so obvious or so frequently seen that everybody who sees it will immediately assume "oh! That is a sticky post!" So for users who benefit from images, I think there is a real benefit both to having the icon and the text.

So here is a case where it feel like usability for those who benefit from images is actually in conflict with usability for those who don't. The enhanced usability for the former group causes redundancy for the latter.

Does anyone have any ideas?

ETA: per aveleh's suggestion, I'm adding some journals that use sticky posts so that you can see examples.

• Denise, who left the original style text in place
• Zvi, who changed the default style text

Comments

[not_a_sniglet]

The information really doesn't seem that redundant to us, and we're screen reader users...But those are the first sticky posts we ever saw because in our journal generally if we want to make something sticky we just use date out of order and date the post to 2020 or something. Now I have to go look to see how you make posts sticky.

[denise]

The last setting on the display tab of /manage/settings is "ID or URL of entry to make sticky" -- paste the URL of the entry you want to make sticky there, and it will appear topmost on your journal without having to change the date on the entry.

[deborah]

thank you so much!