Re: User Stylesheets are Assistive Technology

Thank you list. I ran this across the general WAI list for general input. I
am preparing something for AG based on these results and some other work I
am doing.

I really appreciated all of your comments.

Best, Wayne

On Wed, Jul 18, 2018 at 7:27 AM Jonathan Avila <jon.avila@levelaccess.com>
wrote:

>
>    - I have not looked closely at browser extension technology for a few
>    years, but my suspicion is that it would now be feasible to develop
>    extensions for browsers to manage userCSS, and that this could be used to
>    support a system for sharing more specific CSS for particular sites. Of
>    course, from here to there someone needs to do some development and some
>    spreading the word.
>
>
>
> Many of us are using Stylus for browsers like Chrome but it only inserts
> the styles at the document level via a style tag.  This means that in some
> situations even with !important we are not able to overwrite certain things
> do to CSS specificity rules.
>
>
>
> Jonathan
>
>
>
> *From:* Chaals Nevile <chaals@yandex.ru>
> *Sent:* Wednesday, July 18, 2018 2:32 AM
> *To:* w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
> *Subject:* Re: User Stylesheets are Assistive Technology
>
>
>
> On Wed, 18 Jul 2018 01:50:08 +0200, Wayne Dick <wayneedick@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> There are lots of people who claim to be accessibility experts who
> disregard the value of user stylesheets as a significant technology to
> mitigate problems of visual interface. Actually they work quite well.
>
>
>
> They can indeed work well, but browser implementation of them was never
> great, and I agree with you that it is a great shame it has got worse,
> causing increased problems for many people with disabilities.
>
>
>
> This technology is used primarily be people who are left out of the
> mainstream ATs. They are a way to change colors, ensure a personalized
> contrast ration, control column width and many other things.
>
>
>
> I would class them with browser extensions and other ways to customise
> browser interfaces and behaviour, as clearly belonging to the set of
> assistive technologies people rely on.
>
>
>
> ... Once upon a time Opera had a setup for what it called userJS - a
> technology originally invented to tease a rival for deliberately breaking
> compatibility, by messing with their website, but which proved very useful.
> The later Firefox feature GreaseMonkey did the same thing.
>
>
>
> It was unfortunate that during my time at Opera I never managed to get
> traction for a solid sharing system (now someone would call it an app store
> ;) ) for user CSS.
>
>
>
> For general use there are key limitations on what a userCSS can do before
> it starts to break things, but having site-specific CSS for particular user
> needs is perfectly feasible, but helping people share relevant stuff
> instead of forcing each user to do it for themselves would be a big step
> forward.
>
>
>
> If site developers could see that there were real users downloading
> specific fixes to their sites, from such a sharing system, int could be
> used to explain the problems to them more effectively, and hopefully to
> convince them to help fix some themselves.
>
>
>
> I have not looked closely at browser extension technology for a few years,
> but my suspicion is that it would now be feasible to develop extensions for
> browsers to manage userCSS, and that this could be used to support a system
> for sharing more specific CSS for particular sites. Of course, from here to
> there someone needs to do some development and some spreading the word.
>
>
>
> I think the AG should at least recognize that this is a form of assistive
> technology that is available in a technology landscape that offers almost
> nothing useful for most people with low vision and cognitive disabilities.
>
>
>
> Agreed, but the place to get that idea accepted is in the Working Group
> itself.
>
>
>
> cheers
>
>
>
> Chaals
>
>
>
> --
>
> Chaals: Charles (McCathie) Nevile find more at https://yandex.com
> Using Opera's long-abandoned mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/
> Is there really still nothing better?
>