Structure is worth more than decorative description
Aliases: braille structure · heading marks · decorative description
What it is
In twenty cells, a row that says “heading level 3 Orders” tells you where you are and where you can jump. A row that says “a beautiful blue illustration depicting…” fills the window and adds no operable location. On a braille display, structural information — heading level, lists, forms, table coordinates — is worth more than decorative description. The window is too small to buy style; it can buy orientation.
Why it happens
Reading in a narrow window is a location problem: what class of object am I on, how many items in this group, can I jump to the next block. Heading marks, list numbers, field types, row and column of a cell compress that orientation. Decorative prose answers “what is pretty about it,” which is neither a jump hook nor a way to shrink the candidate set on the tactile channel.
Braille users treat structure signs as wayfinding: a heading mark means heading-jump is available; table coordinates mean we are still in the same table. Spending cells on “beautiful / blue / illustration” buys an adjective that is useless once felt, on the budget that should have bought a landmark. In speech that prose is merely a bit noisy; in braille it knocks out the next cell of structure that was actually needed.
Studying it
Two outputs of the same UI: one keeps heading levels, lists, and table coordinates and drops decorative prose; one keeps the prose and drops structural marks. Display only. Ask people to jump to the order region and read the amount.
Independent variables: presence of structural marks, presence of decorative prose, cell count. Dependent variables: pans to the target region, reports of “don’t know if this is a heading or body,” whether the amount is read from the wrong row.
Inspect whether structure signs actually appear in the reader’s braille table. Do not inspect hierarchy on the visual comp.
Where it stops holding
When the description is the fact to deliver (the figure’s content is information, not decoration), it is promoted to content and is no longer ornament. Poetry, literature, and brand narrative belong on a full-text channel, not inside a control name. Over-dense structure marks (every phrase a heading) turn the window into symbol noise. Speech-only users lean on structure differently; how it sounds in speech should not decide what braille keeps.
Applying it
- Let headings, lists, tables, and form controls enter braille as structure rather than as adjectives: the user should feel “this is a heading / this is item n / this is which cell” first.
- Cut decorative prose that will flood the main window. Facts a figure must carry go in a short sentence, not in an appearance note.
- How to check: stop on the primary-task object on a twenty-cell display and look at that row for structural cues. A full row of ornament with no heading or type is style bought with orientation’s budget.