Today I'm going to post about something that I ran into this morning that I think is an important thing for all software developers to keep in mind.  First, a little background. 

I made what I would consider a very quick move here from Rochester to Redmond.  The whole process from getting the offer to arriving here and starting to work was less than a month.  So as you might imagine I didn't have time to plan for a permanent place to live before I arrived, and so I'm in temporary housing.  Like any good geek should I made sure that one of the things that I wanted sent to temporary housing rather than storage was my computer.  Although I disconnected and set aside the computer I wasn't the one who actually put it into boxes.  I trusted the professionals to do it.

Well the computer arrived yesterday.  Got the boxes open, hooked up the cables.  No mouse.  Keyboard was there, but no mouse to be found.  Now I'm no novice, I can navigate Windows pretty well without the mouse.  Until I tried to setup the internet that is.  The software provided to me by the cable carrier for high speed internet doesn't have keyboard shortcuts programmed into it.  I can't navigate the very simple wizard interface because I can't click to give focus to the right controls.

While I am sure the cable company believes that they are delivering the simplest experience possible they have in fact oversimplified the program to the point where it is unusable without a mouse.  The lesson I want to teach here is that software needs to respect the fact that not all users will interact with it the same way.  Some people may be mouse-aholics, others may be the fastest keyboard slinger you've ever seen, software needs to account for both.  And other forms of accessibility as well of course.  If someone can't use your software that's a customer you've lost.  And we all want to make sure we have the largest audiences possible for our software.

That's all for me, I'm off to find a good new mouse...