Re: User Stylesheets are Assistive Technology

"I think a major issue with user stylesheets is that there are no stable
CSS-APIs that you could work against."

selectors are about as stable as they come and incredibly effective.
a generic stylesheet may not beat specificity 100% of the time, but that
shouldn't discount it, by any means.
moreover, any style sheet added to the document is going to have to be
scripted in, and even more likely in javascript.
so since we are already using javascript, lets just find the styles that
are not winning the specificity wars and then rewrite the style at a higher
specificity.

we can also use javascript to address frailty/brittleness in selectivity;
offer a nav/modal that appears on activation. read the dom, present page
elements in nav/modal with toggles/options, etc.
there are already a ton of bookmarklets that do most of this, pieces of
this, etc.

i actually think bookmarklets are more ideal here for
cross-browse/rplatforms, most particularly in terms of maintenance;
however, then i think it becomes an issue of user adoption. not many people
know about bookmarklets.

maybe i'm missing something entirely? i am certainly not an a11y expert.



On Wed, Jul 18, 2018 at 7:01 PM, Chaals Nevile <chaals@yandex.ru> wrote:

> On Wed, 18 Jul 2018 21:40:11 +0200, Tobias Bengfort <
> tobias.bengfort@posteo.de> wrote:
>
> I think a major issue with user stylesheets is that there are no stable
>> CSS-APIs that you could work against. A user-stylesheet is basically a
>> monkey-patch that will break on a regular basis.
>>
>> In order to get this working reliably we would have to convince authors
>> to trat their CSS as a public interface and announce breaking changes
>> early on. I am not sure this reasonable.
>>
>
> We would. But in a world of CSS preprocessors and so on, it is possibly
> easier than it might seem.
>
> cheers
>
> tobias
>>
>>
>> On 18/07/18 01:50, Wayne Dick 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.
>>>
>>> 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 use Safari because the browser will host user stylesheets. It is too
>>> bad
>>> that other browsers decided to stop supporting this important assistive
>>> technology.
>>>
>>> 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.
>>>
>>> For those who want to tell me how wonderful screen magnifiers are if I
>>> just
>>> used them correctly, don't bother. I probably know how to use them better
>>> than you. For my needs, screen magnification scores zero.
>>>
>>> Wayne Dick
>>>
>>>
>>
>
> --
> 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?
>
>


-- 
J. Albert Bowden II

albert@bowdenweb.com
jalbertbowden@gmail.com
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