Re: Partially sighted Web user

Although it may not be obvious to the casual reader, most of the practices
which gratuitously fix the pixel size of the content - such as using GIFs
to display text - are discouraged in the WCAG.

As Charles says, there are problems with images where contemporary media
are not scalable and W3C has SVG under development to help.

However, in the short term I would also suggest that she evaluate Opera for
her use because it may make enough difference to be worth the change.

Al

At 02:35 PM 10/1/99 +0000, Julie Howell wrote:
>I have been contacted by a partially sighted lady here in the UK  who is
using a
>particular Acorn Archimedes screen magnification system.
>
>She is experiencing problems when trying to view some Websites.  She is
>under the impression that Web designers are able to code Webpages so that
>horizonal scrolling will never be necessary by users of magnification
software.
>Here's what she says in a messasge to me:
>
>" Formatting.   I'm still concerned that this issue doesn't seem to be
amongst
>the ones you raise with designers.   Yet it's quite crucial for
>anyone using screen enlargement,  like me.
>I need to be able to format all text to about 50-character lines,  and a
resolution
>width of 440 pixels.   Do you take this into account when advising clients?
>Some sites reformat automatically,  giving me line
>lengths that fit my screen.   Others have a fixed
>line length,  which makes me have to scroll across,
> which is very bad for my eyes :-(
>Can you add automatic reformatting to your
>desired parameters,  please?"
>
>My response to this lady so far has been that I didn't believe it was
possible to
>fix the width of pages without the use of tables (which then causes
problems for
>other Net users).
>
>Doesn't all magnification software (such as Zoomtext) require horizontal
>scrolling?  Is is realistic to expect all Web designers to put text with
fixed-width
>tables/frames (I think not!).
>Am I missing something?  Or should I advise this lady that there is
nothing that
>can be done to help her and she should get some new software (which she is
>very reluctant to do)?
>
>Thanks and best wishes
>Julie Howell
>Campaigns Officer (Access to Digital)
>RNIB
>JHowell@rnib.org.uk
>

Received on Friday, 1 October 1999 15:13:22 UTC