Re: What accessibility support exists for low vision?

Hi Wayne,

You asked:

> Again, I ask. What is the accessibility support for low vision?
Enlargement without word wrapping will never give equally effective access.

OK, I think we all accept this as a truism. What then is the solution? And
what tools today deliver that solution?

I think you have made the case that zoom alone is not the answer (and I for
one don't need more convincing - you are correct), but I've not heard what
else you believe is required, and I've never seen a list of tools that
deliver other 'requirements' of low vision users outside of screen
magnification and screen readers. Where are the tools?

In other words, how much of this is a tooling problem, versus a content
authoring and mark-up problem?

We can't just simply say to page authors "you can't do this, or you can't
do that", because we're not solving problems then, we're simply
imposing restrictions that will be ignored and fought against.

So, proactively, what are the gaps that need filling, and who is
responsible for filling which gaps?

I will argue that the content author can only do so much before the "issue"
becomes one that is shared against all web-sites equally (versus what I as
a content author can do or not do to have an impact). In terms of the Web
Content Accessibility Guidelines (with a focus on "content"), what do we
tell authors, versus what is required on the tooling side (either as
stand-alone tools, or browser extensions, or... [???])

JF

On Tue, Jul 18, 2017 at 4:33 PM, Wayne Dick <wayneedick@gmail.com> wrote:

> To the Group:
>
>
> One thing that we have proved is that zoom is not accessibility support.
> My work on reading has shown that zoom is very possibly the worst user
> interface in existence. This is not hyperbole. A process that requires 50
> to 100 times the operational cost is objectively terrible. In addition, the
> same research implies a gross inadequacy for other uses like navigation,
> search and operation.
>
> The Zoom Grid I presented for analyzing the complexity of reading
> illustrates three profound difficulties with zoomed web content. Assuming
> we are using 400% enlargement of 16px font size on a 1280 by 720 page,
> simple zoom creates the following problems.
>
> 1)  Operational complexity of reading goes up by a factor of 50 over
> normal use or reading with screen reader. (Given a column width of 30% or
> greater)
>
> 2)  The buffer of characters that are immediately available for memory
> support has no more than 36 characters. (That is one line) Note: For CJK
> that is 18 for horizontal and 11 for vertical.
>
> 3)  General navigation, search and page operation goes up by a factor of
> 16.
>
> The numbers for 1) have already been computed in [Operational Cost of
> Horizontal Scrolling]. To see 2) note that a 1280px line really has about
> 90% useful space. Divide that by the average character width (near 8px) we
> get 36. The third is also quite simple. If you zoom a page at 400%, you can
> only view 1/16th of the content in any screen (4 across and 4 down).  That
> means when a normal user must only search one page at a time, the user with
> low vision must search 16 pages to survey the same information.
>
> To proceed from this point on, AG must acknowledge that the original
> assumption that screen magnification was accessibility support is a
> falsehood. There is no use of simple zoom that does not create profound
> difficulty. At best zoom is a bad accommodation for inaccessible content.
>
> Again, I ask. What is the accessibility support for low vision?
> Enlargement without word wrapping will never give equally effective access.
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-- 
John Foliot
Principal Accessibility Strategist
Deque Systems Inc.
john.foliot@deque.com

Advancing the mission of digital accessibility and inclusion