Re: Partially sighted Web user

It probably is not quite impossible! One or two well publicized law suits
versus "public sites" should have a chilling (positive) effect on the
attitudes of web designers and corporate owners of web sites. It can't come
soon enough!!

Designers need to write to banner advertisers and advise them of the
problems with 468x60 banners, and refuse to incorporate them in their
designs until they are changed! Similarly, lots of link exhange code is
difficult to render accessible because of server side image maps.

Regards...

Paul


>SNIP< Convincing designers of this will be nearly impossible, considering
how many have already abandoned people with 640x480 resolution, or WebTV
users at 544x372. The lure of a large "canvas" is too great for some people.
The problem goes even deeper: advertising banners were standardized some
time ago, and one of the standard sizes, most commonly seen as the top
banner on a lot of sites that carry advertising, is 468x60. Sites carrying
these ads will almost always present a problem on a system requiring a pixel
width of 440.
>
>Adam Guasch-Melendez
>Webmaster
>US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
>
>>>> Julie Howell  <JHOWELL@rnib.org.uk> 10/01 8:46 AM >>>
>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 20:19:21 UTC