Sunday, June 21, 2009

Hand washing for swine flu

To wash your hands properly, first wet your hands, then apply soap.In my analysis of the Australian Government's Swine Flu web site I suggested the instructions for handwashing could be improved. The instructions are contained in a 24 kbyte GIF file on the "Individuals and households" page. Here I have separated the four steps into individual images, reduced to 32 colours, and removed text from the images. The result is four files, each of 4 kbytes.

To wash your hands properly:
  1. Wet your hands, then apply soap.

    To wash your hands properly, first wet your hands, then apply soap.
  2. Lather vigorously for 15 to 20 seconds.

    To wash your hands properly. Wet your hands, then apply soap. Lather vigorously for 15 to 20 seconds. Rinse with water. Dry your hands afterwards with a clean towel.
  3. Rinse with water.

    To wash your hands properly, third rinse with water.
  4. Dry your hands afterwards with a clean towel.

    To wash your hands properly, lastly dry your hands afterwards with a clean towel.
Some points to note: I replaced the dash in "15-20 seconds" with the word "to". This is more understandable if the text is converted to synthetic speech by an assisted technology device for the blind. Otherwise the text will be read as "fifteen dash twenty seconds".

Reducing the complexity of the images by removing the shading to make them pictograms would reduce them to 1 kbyte each and also make them easier to understand. A simple animation also could be made from the images.

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