Comments on: Now with ‘zoom’ layout

By: Mark Boulton

Mark Boulton — Fri, 08 Jul 2005 00:38:42 +0000

Thanks Jough - it’s changed now, sorry for the inconvenience.

Your comment about the light grey and lighter grey is a really valid point and one which I’m struggling with in terms of the aesthetics of that part of the design. I *know* it should be darker and more obvious to the people who need it, but at the moment I can’t quite think of a solution with the same visual subtlety. It’s an ongoing arguement with myself that one… :(

By: Jough Dempsey

Jough Dempsey — Fri, 08 Jul 2005 00:27:23 +0000

Hi Mark,

Maybe it would help if you updated the article. I read your piece before looking at the comments and couldn’t find where it said “low vision” at the top left. When I clicked on “Accessibility Options” there wasn’t an option marked “Low Vision” or “Zoom Layout” so I thought maybe you took it down. I checked the page source just to see if somehow my browser wasn’t showing it to me, and then I read the comments and see that you’ve changed the name between the time you wrote the article and the time I read it.

Also, as a low vision user myself, light grey text on a lighter grey background is really hard to read, and I never even would have noticed it if you hadn’t directed me to it via your article.

By: Scott Cranfill

Scott Cranfill — Wed, 06 Jul 2005 01:42:03 +0000

Glad to help out :)

By: Mark Boulton

Mark Boulton — Wed, 06 Jul 2005 01:37:53 +0000

I quite like the of that Scott – thanks! :)

By: Scott Cranfill

Scott Cranfill — Tue, 05 Jul 2005 22:27:50 +0000

Perhaps just call it “Accessibility Options”? I think most people who would need to use the feature would be familiar with this terminology at this point. It’s been used to describe such features in both Windows and Mac OS for a while now.

By: Mark Boulton

Mark Boulton — Mon, 04 Jul 2005 17:19:39 +0000

Kev - That does sound like a good idea of how to technically standardise a particular label. But, it still leaves us with the question of what the words should be. I’ve yet to think of anything appropriate.

Kates - Joe mentioned this in his presentation I think. Only a couple of browsers at the moment come close to this, Opera and Mozilla (?), not sure, but yes that would be an ideal scenario.

By: Kates

Kates — Mon, 04 Jul 2005 05:59:45 +0000

It’s better still if the browser has a setting to find for a low vision version of the site if there is one and use the default one if there is none. This way the user can set it only once for all the sites he visit. Or maybe I’ll send this to the mozilla guys.

By: Kev Mears

Kev Mears — Sun, 03 Jul 2005 08:11:50 +0000

Perhaps the problem of how to signal the availability of special accessibility features could be solved by a microformat approach.

In a similar way to hCard is a standard way to mark up contact info, maybe site options could be marked up as hOptions?

What does everyone think

By: Mark Boulton

Mark Boulton — Sun, 03 Jul 2005 06:54:05 +0000

Hmmm, good point guys. I know Doug had problems with exactly the same thing. A few people thought his label (’prefs’) was too small and obscure for people who would need it.

Maybe ‘low vision’ is the wrong label.

What do you think about ‘Display / Layout / Site preferences’?

It seems that actually producing a low-vision layout is easier than providing a clear link in order to change to that layout. That still remains a bit of a challenge.

By: Julian

Julian — Sun, 03 Jul 2005 06:18:09 +0000

That’s exactly what I thought “Well… great, low-vision layout… but how should low-vision people ever find that if even me’s got a hard time locating that button while I just read a whole article about its existance?

By: Kenneth

Kenneth — Sun, 03 Jul 2005 06:13:48 +0000

What immediately strikes me is that the option for “low vision” is in small, low-contrast type! I had to go back and look for it.