As a member of the OASIS team, I can proudly say that I am very glad to have you as a reader of our blog. Recently, I had a chance to survey the extended association market and the theme of electronic content distribution was prevalent in my response analysis, even though it was unclear exactly how readers would like to obtain this content. Mark Coe makes a compelling case for the eBook in our recently published Advisor newsletter. If you'd like to sign up for this newsletter, simply visit our sign-up form. This newsletter is further evidence that the degrees of separation between a provider and a consumer can be reduced through technology. We are also excited to be continuing our own green initiatives with this communication, and we hope to reach you in this format each quarter.

I hope to close this newsletter by bringing you a thought, idea, or inspiration I've had during the previous quarter. These ideas or mantras will often be concepts that you can expect to see reflected in future software that we produce at OASIS. These are things that become a part of our vision over time. What follows this month is a brief reflection on how consideration for disabled or impaired users can improve technology for all users.

Cater first to your users with the least ability ... they will dictate an exceptional level of usability.

While I worked in the E-Commerce industry, there was a prevalent mantra which arose as a result of how the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) legislation impacted (and benefited) all electronic commerce. Users with disabilities impact software decisions in an immensely favorable manner. A significant amount of planning went into ensuring that any software path or process was accessible by impaired users, who utilized browsers that included screen scraping applications, which translated text into a computerized voice. This literally means that entire features were planned, from their inception, to accommodate users who might only be able to “see” a screen as a robotic voice that reads it to them. This technology is incredible! These ADA requirements, which were often nonnegotiable, led to an absolutely fantastic end product for all customers. If an application is so accessible as to accommodate a digital-voiced narrator, it is certainly able to accommodate nearly every other user on the planet. Navigation paths, alternate text-based descriptions, user interfaces, buttons, and graphical decisions become so well thought out, that they can’t help but become successful for all users. Analysis of the "paths" people took through the system proved that if we could cater to a browser which was a screen reader (literally), there would never be a lack of related, successful user activity across the entire application. When I saw regions of an E-Commerce site that were highly tuned to accommodate ADA considerations, there was never a lack of traffic, use, and (I suspect) efficiency.

Efficiency is indeed a strong part of what we hope to bring both you and your association in the coming months with our product and its future development.  Thanks for reading.

Posted by Jon Jenkins, OASIS Product Manager, as a part of The Advisor newsletter's Q3, 2009 release