Re: Are accessibility guidelines defined for the blind?

Hi Len,

Thank you very much telling me it is JavaScript!
I understand why web designer make these construction. If you find a
individual page via a search engine they want to offer you some
navigation options.
> 
> p.s.
> I guess another way around this is to use high screen resolution and a
> screen magnifier, like Zoomtext etc..  But then you wind up doing a lot of
> scrolling left and right, even for pages which would normally behave
> themselves.  Is that why you prefer to set screen resolution and fonts
> instead of using a screen magnifier program?  Are there other reasons
> also?  Well, hmm, cost of course. And unavailability at public
> locations.  Any others?
>
I do it both. I have a vision between 2% and 9%. I can also read braille
very well, but I use screen magnification with ZoomText, because
accessibility at graphical user interfaces is in general beter with a
screen magnifier than it is with a braille display. ZoomText can magnify
up to 16 times and in 640x480 display resolution I use 8x magnification
plus the 12 font.
I have a Pentium 133hz here at my work. If I set resolution to 800x600
my screen magnifier performs very bad and it is nearly possible to
scroll (move the magnified view). At home I have a Pentium III 667hz and
there I can set resolution to 800x600 and ZoomText magnification to 12.
Indeed this solves some problems, but not all. Setting font size to 12
causes a lot of problems in tables.

There are two scrolling options in ZoomText. Automatic reading feature.
This features presents the text of a document on the screen. I can
define my own font size, color combination etc. Very nice feature to
read e-mail and documents like in Microsoft Word and sometimes it also
works fine to read web pages. But if a web page is designed with a table
the entire table is read. If I want to read only a column I first have
to highlight the entire column and after doing that I can ZoomText let
it read. This cost a lot of time.
The second option is manual scrolling. I press the ALT+ARROW key to
scroll and read the text. Everytime if I at hte end of the line I press
a hotkey combination to jump to the left border and start to read the
next line of text. If there is text outside the screen I have to read to
the end of the screen. Move my magnifieid view to the trackbar at the
bottom of the screen and find my line of text, that I was reading back
to read the last words of the line. If there is a frames construction I
load the page in a new window. After doing that in most situations there
are no trackbars so I can read that text much faster.

I also know sight impaired who have a much better vision that I have.
They prefer not to use the screen magnifiers, because of all the
scrolling. They also use large font settings, but have the same problems
with those trackbars and as you already said with image text.
I have also collegues here who set display resolution to 640x480 to get
larger text. For most people if they are 50 or 60 their eyes are not so
good than if they were 20 or 30. They can drive a car so they are not
low vision, but they need some magnification and do this by setting
larger fonts. This is I think a very large group of people.
What is good for those people is also good for people like me.

Hope you understand?
Regards Peter Verhoeven
 
> At 03:58 PM 5/2/00 +0200, Peter Verhoeven wrote:
> >Hi Len,
> >
> >Thank you very much for your quick reply and summary.
> >What I and most low vision do is define their onw font size and style. I
> >always use font size 12 and font style arial and at my work place I have
> >always my computer on a 640x480 pixels. If you go to www.postbank.nl
> >(sorry it is Dutch) you see that all the problems come together and it
> >is realy impossible to read information. Another problem is, that
> >sometimes loading a page in frames constuction in a new seperate window
> >is disable by use of ASP. If I try to load the page in a new window
> >without frames I get the same frame constuction back.
> >I think a lot of these problems can be solved by including more option
> >in the browser. I'm not interesting in nice web design or creative
> >graphical designs. I'm interesting in information on web pages. So if a
> >word is too long for the specified table cell. Don't make the cell and
> >the table width longer, but brake the owrd in two pieces (if I want
> >that).
> >A lot of people define a table with a width of 640. Than have a column
> >of 200 and 400 and place a banner of width 480 pixels in the column of
> >440?
> >I think in such a situation the web designer makes a mistake and he or
> >she must be punished for such a mistake. So make the image smaller. but
> >why browser also make the width of table longer?
> >
> >Text on images indedd is also often an big problem. Also if there ia an
> >ALT tag. Alt tags doesn't help users with screen magnifiers with high
> >magnification level and no speech not a lot, because the popup window is
> >mostly much large than the magnified view so impossible to read.
> >
> >Regards Peter Verhoeven
> >Internet : http://www.magnifiers.org (the Screen Magnifiers Homepage)
> >
> >
> >"Leonard R. Kasday" wrote:
> > >
> > > Peter,
> > >
> > > Thank you for bringing up those extra points.  You're right, we need to pay
> > > more attention to partial sight (a.k.a. low vision).  By the way, even
> > > though I don't have low vision, I run into these sorts of problems
> > > sometimes with popup boxes.
> > >
> > > So lets summarize your points for low vision:
> > >
> > > 1. Optimally, users should be able to have scrollbars even if the web page
> > > turns them off.
> > > 2. Until browsers do (1), pages should never turn off scrollbars.
> > > 3. Table dimensions should be expressed as percentages, not absolute units.
> > > 4. Avoid using images wider than  N pixels  (what's a good value for N?)
> > >
> > > to which I'd add
> > > 5. If you use style sheets for layout, avoid specifications which cause
> > > objects to overlap each other when font size is increased.
> > > 6. Whenever feasible, display text in such a way that it wraps sensibly
> > > when font size is increased.
> > > 7. Use real text, not images of text, so  that user preferences in color,
> > > font, and size may be used.
> > >
> > > Len
> > >
> > > p.s.
> > > I'm actually more familiar with the term "low vision" than "partial
> > > sight".  Is the term "partial sight" more used in Europe?
> > >
> > > At 09:36 AM 5/2/00 +0200, Peter Verhoeven wrote:
> > > >Hi,
> > > >
> > > >This is not the first time that I bring up this point, but because I got
> > > >less responce here a new try.
> > > >
> > > >The WAI often mentions numbers of people that having problems accessing
> > > >web pages of the Internet. I often read the number 10 million. Are those
> > > >10 million people blind? No, they are not blind at all. A lot of them
> > > >are sight impaired which is not the same.
> > > >In the "quick tips" I read only tips to make web pages accessible to
> > > >blind, or maybe to make web pages accessible by using Lynx? If I check
> > > >web pages with real accessibility problems for sight impaired with
> > > >Bobby, it tells me Congratulations your web page is Bobby Appoved. I
> > > >only need to do some manual checking, but all these checkpoints have
> > > >nothing to do with things like universal design and color contrast.
> > > >
> > > >A growing number of web pages are designed "system dependent" that
> > > >means, that if I don't have a special display resolution or font size
> > > >setting a lot of information on the web pages is outside my screen and
> > > >the only way to access is to track on bars.
> > > >Some web designers don't like trackbars and disable them, so it becomes
> > > >realy impossible to get some information on the page. But the page is
> > > >Bobby approved (Congratulations!).
> > > >
> > > >In the statistics from visitors to my web site The Screen Magnifiers
> > > >Homepage at http://www.magnifiers.org I see that 25% of my visitors have
> > > >a display resolution of 640x480. We as sight impaired use this
> > > >resolution often because the the text on hte screen is much lagere than
> > > >in a higher resolution and setting a high resolution means that you need
> > > >a more powerful system with more memory to let a screen magnifier
> > > >performs well.
> > > >
> > > >A lot of these problems occurs in table and frames constructions and
> > > >personaly I know it is often difficult to solve these problems also if
> > > >you specified a table width of 640. If an image inside the table is
> > > >larger than 640 or a word in a cell is larger the width of the table
> > > >increases. A lot of web designers don't want to use percentages for
> > > >defining table widh, because the lines of text becomes so long if
> > > >someone has set a high display resolution. The problem "long line" seems
> > > >to have a higher priority than "horizontal scrollbars".
> > > >
> > > >In my opinion a lot of these problems could be solved by the makers of
> > > >browsers.
> > > >In my opinion more attention is needed for accessibility problems that
> > > >partially sighted have?
> > > >
> > > >Regards Peter Verhoeven
> > >
> > > --
> > > Leonard R. Kasday, Ph.D.
> > > Institute on Disabilities/UAP, and
> > > Department of Electrical Engineering
> > > Temple University
> > > 423 Ritter Annex, Philadelphia, PA 19122
> > >
> > > kasday@acm.org
> > > http://astro.temple.edu/~kasday
> > >
> > > (215) 204-2247 (voice)
> > > (800) 750-7428 (TTY)
> 
> --
> Leonard R. Kasday, Ph.D.
> Institute on Disabilities/UAP, and
> Department of Electrical Engineering
> Temple University
> 423 Ritter Annex, Philadelphia, PA 19122
> 
> kasday@acm.org
> http://astro.temple.edu/~kasday
> 
> (215) 204-2247 (voice)
> (800) 750-7428 (TTY)

Received on Wednesday, 3 May 2000 03:57:18 UTC