But can I use it?

Today is World Usability Day. This year's theme is communication. According to Elizabeth Rosenzweig, founder of World Usability Day, the day will 'serve as an impetus to creating greater awareness for designs, products and services that improve and facilitate communication around the world'.

Usability most often applies to websites. When we're not talking about websites, usability is generally called universal design.

Plain English and usability go hand-in-hand. For people to understand your website, form, manual, email, presentation, or report, you need to communicate clearly. And you need to make sure that your whole audience finds your communication easy to use.

Some usability experts are Whitney Quesenbery, Jakob Nielsen, and Gerry McGovern. New Zealand companies that specialise in usability are AccEase and Optimal Usability.

For information about World Usability Day, see http://worldusabilityday.org/

For information about universal design, see http://www.accease.com/pmwiki.php?n=Publications.UniversalDesign

For information about Whitney Quesenbery, see http://wqusability.com/

For information about Jakob Nielsen, see http://useit.com/

For information about Gerry McGovern, see http://giraffeforum.com/wordpress

For information about AccEase, see http://accease.com/

For information about Optimal Usability, see http://optimalusability.com/