| cdrom600 on Dec 14, 2006 at 2:19:40 PM (# 8) One of my older relatives has a condition called macular degeneration. He cannot see with the center of his eye; he relies on his peripheral vision. Still, he is amazingly dedicated - he uses magnifying glasses, etc. to read, and he still uses the computer.
I believe he is working on writing a book right now. He has a computer with a 42" plasma display running at relatively low resolution and with Windows in high-contrast mode. He is still able to touch-type and do simple image editing.
ctcrmcou on Dec 18, 2006 at 6:07:16 AM (# 9)
This message has been edited.Well, you can't accommodate everyone. Even running 640x480 on a 19" will be a problem for some. Perhaps a projection device on a wall (the entire wall) would help. If you can't get your wheel chair up the stairs, you build a ramp. This does not mean that every person needs or has a ramp. It means that some require extra accommodations that go beyond the norm. If you know you have a (visual) problem, don't complain about the world, make an adjustment to accommodate your needs if it's that important. Sorry to say, but you have to look out for yourself in this world, because more than likely strangers won't.
Write your site to accommodate your majority audience. There will always be those who complain. I'll bet those same people don't read paper back novels. But, they probably listen to audio books as a substitute. Screen readers are an option, but we all know the issue with reading websites there also.
Not to say that the web is written by and for young people only. But unfortunately the attitudes of developers (who do tend to be young) are to design cool before practical, or to satisfy the majority, not the minority. (Which is why I could care less about my site's working properly in Opera..ha ha).
BachusII on Dec 18, 2006 at 6:29:00 AM (# 10)Been reading about bostionian transport websites hae you? =]
MMinor on Dec 22, 2006 at 6:30:05 AM (# 11)To CTCRMCOU:
I agree...if you need to use a wheel chair, build a ramp. But don't build a structure that prevents me from building a ramp.
I wish no one was ever in the position of having to build a ramp, but as my grandmother used to say, "If wishes were horses, then begars would ride".
ctcrmcou on Dec 22, 2006 at 9:32:42 AM (# 12)
This message has been edited.Well see, that's just it. I'm not suggesting to "building a structure that prevents you from building a ramp". I've (and others) already made many suggestions on how to get around a fixed size font. (e.g. "please use our side door, it is on the ground level"). They are: larger screen, lower resolution (for bigger font appearance), or if neither works, be innovative and copy the content to notepad (I do this once in a while, so I can print and go), and change the font to 72 if necessary.
Still, I need to deliver a product in a package, and that package will have boundaries. If someone needs to open the package all over the room, let them.
Number1 on Jan 3, 2007 at 3:41:29 PM (# 13)There are some handy favelets that will expand or shrink most screens, including fonts and graphics. I use one that shrinks screens all the time. I wonder if it would be feasible to build a scrolling device that would expand any selected text block in a separate window and scroll it in some huge size? Or even - for severe macular degeneration - use the entire screen for each letter and flash them sequentially. The user selects a text block and then hits a function key or something, and the text is displayed, one letter at a time. I think you could learn to read like that at near normal speed.
philcha on Jan 26, 2007 at 3:22:33 AM (# 14)Frumbert, I'm puzzled - why do you want to do this? From the user point of view, there's an easy answer - get Firefox (or Opera, so long as they don't want to visit ctcrmcou's site). IE fails to implement a W3C accessibility recommendation that users should always be able to over-ride font size, even if the CSS specifies fixed units. I still use fixed font sizes on my site, because I designed it when Netscape 4 was still common. I've tried relative sizes, but can never get things to align properly and the relative sizes of paragraphs and headers always look wrong, no matter how much I tweak them.
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event for font-size change?