I was talking to a customer the other day and thinking to myself how much I enjoy working with customers like her. Why? Because she is a sensible pragmatist with a ‘can do’ approach.
When faced with a web site which she knows presents real difficulties around accessibility she didn’t miss a beat when a user came to her with a problem.
The user was Deaf and was struggling with the particular specialist and abstract vocabulary of the site. For someone with New Zealand Sign as a first language and English their second the information needed was hard to access and understand. My customer did not turn her away or refuse to help. She concluded that such requests would be quite rare, and found a simple, individual face-to-face solution, where the user got the information and some top-shelf service. It was a one off cost and worth it she felt.
Who said public service was dead!
People like that are great aren’t they! I often get cynical about people who work for the government and forget all about the good ones