Re: Aging Eye Reader's Gripe of the Day

Hi
The key words here are not word wrap (which is just the effect) but fluid,
flexible and elastic layouts.
I'm not a technie but the key element in CSS seems to be to use percentages
to set the size of the  font, columns and window.  As a reader you can then
pull the window (by clicking on a corner) to whatever size you want,
increase the font size to suit your eyes and all the text reflows to the
new width.
If the page layout is multicolumn, has lots of pictures or is a form it
might mess up when pushed to extremes. However if it is mostly text that I
want to read this puts me in control of my reading experience.
There are not enough good examples around but for a basic example have a
play with  http://www.w3.org/standards/webdesign/accessibility . This lets
me make the text quite a bit bigger and rewrap the text up to a reasonable
level before it breaks.(Is it relevant to say that my browser of choice is
Firefox and that some browsers may behave differently?)
Note to developers - one day when you get passed 40 and just before you
admit that you need reading glasses you will begin to understand why this
is important.
Happy weekend
Suzette


On 13 July 2012 21:28, GF Mueden@ <gfmueden@verizon.net> wrote:

> Am sending this because I think that the technical part of the
> communications community lacks input of examples from the vulgar plebs and
> needs to be reminded that obeying guidelines may not be enough to produce
> accessibility.
>
> The AFB has a unit that provides technical advice and product evaluations
> for the vision impaired.  Its AccessWorld 80+ character line is too long
> for easy reading.  When enlarged it runs off the screen and to read it
> every line must be chased to the end, back and forth for every line of
> their long newsletter.   For long documents that passes usability and
> becomes accessibility.
>
> When I suggested word wrap as the fix for it I was told that  AFB's Web
> Department says that word wrap is not a feature it will be implementing.
> They need educating.
>
> Word wrap helps those with poor acuity who enlarge (keeping the copy on
> the screen) and those with limited field width (allowing them to pull in
> the margins and read a narrow column).   These two groups of the vision
> impaired deserve accommodation by AFB as long as it claims to support the
> low visioned.
>
> Here is an example of a page that uses word wrap well.
>
> http://blindness.**growingstrong.org/eyes/lvres.**htm<http://blindness.growingstrong.org/eyes/lvres.htm>
>
> It allows me to pull in the margins (for a narrow field) and enlarge (for
> poor acuity) and it keeps the copy on the screen as the adjustments are
> changed.
> ---------
> gfmueden@verizon.net    ===gm===
>
>