Newerer, betterer, PVRer PVRs
Dedicated readers will have slogged through my turgid War and Peace of an exegesis on the accessibility and usability failings of the Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8000 PVR. Curiously, somebody else in town has been all up PVRs’ noses: Teehan + Lax (not Tegan & Sara), a small hive of graphic designers–cum–usabilitistas.
You may wish to download their inaccessible, untagged PDF report on usability failings of Bell ExpressVu and Rogers PVRs. (Curiously, ExpressVu was an early client of mine.)
I visited the duo of Geoff Teehan and Jon Lax and their three staff last week, and, in a frequently-pleasant conversation, we discussed usability, accessibility, and graphic design. As you can see on their Weblog, the company is arse-deep in plans for some supersecret new technology that has to be either a new software platform or another PVR- or Windows XP Media Edition–like product. Certainly they have no interest whatsoever in improving existing products.
So I told them they’d need to include accessibility, and I intended to hold them to that. Tons of my friends and I can help.