Journal

Now with ‘zoom’ layout

It's amazing how productive an afternoon watching a gig can be.

Following Joe Clark's excellent presentation at @media and his equally excellent article at A List Apart, I thought it's about time I did something to address the accessibility options on this site.

So, if you click on 'Accessibility options' on the top left you'll go to a page where you can set a cookie for the new layout.

Just to summarise Joe's points from his presentation in creating a 'zoom' layout (please correct me if this is wrong):

  • Make multicolumn into one column
  • Make small fonts into larger fonts
  • Reorder navigation and content
  • Minimise navigation at the top of the page

I will of course be addressing the point Joe raised in his presentation that low-vision people generally prefer a high contrast (light text on a dark background), which is the version I've added here, but people with certain learning difficulties prefer dark type on a pale background. I will be adding a version of this soon.

Doug Bowman of Stopdesign recently added these two different styles to his site. The zoom layout is available for use and was used as the basis for my high contrast stylesheet.

Also, thanks to Roger Johansson for prompting me to get this done and also providing the code for the cookie.

Like I said, this is very much a 'beta' layout at the moment. There are problems with it and there are problems with the content ordering and stuff, but it's a start and hopefully I'll begin trimming it down over the next few weeks.

Comments

Seems to me that you should use a different symbol than the “x” now. ;-) I can imagine people thinking it’ll stop or delete something. Maybe make a little eye symbol?

Sage's Gravatar

Sage
Sat 2nd Jul 2005
at 7:38 pm

Good point Sage, thanks for that. I’ll have a think. An eye might be a bit complex for that size. To be honest I’m not even sure of the call to action - does ‘low vision’ do enough as a label?

Mark Boulton's Gravatar

Mark Boulton
Sat 2nd Jul 2005
at 7:45 pm

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.

Kenneth's Gravatar

Kenneth
Sat 2nd Jul 2005
at 9:13 pm

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?

Julian's Gravatar

Julian
Sat 2nd Jul 2005
at 9:18 pm

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.

Mark Boulton's Gravatar

Mark Boulton
Sat 2nd Jul 2005
at 9:54 pm

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

Kev Mears's Gravatar

Kev Mears
Sat 2nd Jul 2005
at 11:11 pm

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.

Kates's Gravatar

Kates
Sun 3rd Jul 2005
at 8:59 pm

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.

Mark Boulton's Gravatar

Mark Boulton
Mon 4th Jul 2005
at 8:19 am

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.

Scott Cranfill's Gravatar

Scott Cranfill
Tue 5th Jul 2005
at 1:27 pm

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

Mark Boulton's Gravatar

Mark Boulton
Tue 5th Jul 2005
at 4:37 pm

Glad to help out :)

Scott Cranfill's Gravatar

Scott Cranfill
Tue 5th Jul 2005
at 4:42 pm

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.

Jough Dempsey's Gravatar

Jough Dempsey
Thu 7th Jul 2005
at 3:27 pm

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… :(

Mark Boulton's Gravatar

Mark Boulton
Thu 7th Jul 2005
at 3:38 pm

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A picture of Mark BoultonI'm a graphic designer from near Cardiff in the UK. I've been a designer for over ten years now and primarily work on the web. I'm still partial to a bit of print every now and then though. I used to work for Agency.com in London as an Art Director before working as a Senior Designer for the BBC in sunny Cardiff. This was all before I took leave of my senses and formed my own design consultancy, Mark Boulton Design Ltd.

I've got a thing about grids and typography and occasionally ramble on about them to anyone who will listen.

If you're after simple, clean and effective web design; let me know.