On 30 Jun 2009, at 16:46, Jens-Uwe Korff wrote:
For an example of a high-contrast version may I suggest to check out
the Sydney Morning Herald's Travel section (http://www.smh.com.au/travel/
). Click on "Low vision" in the navigation bar (We're going to
replace "low vision" with "high contrast" since the former can be
perceived as discriminatory). The styles you see then have been
developed together with a vision-impaired person.
They're not pretty, but usable.
I believe a better solution to this issue is to work at the level of
the browser, or operating system, rather than on site by site basis.
i.e creating really intelligent browser plug-ins or applications that
are able to interpret the mess on the internet and make it more usable
to all. This solution means that everyone could customise their
experience to make it suitable for them. On the smh travel site you
have only two options (normal and low vision) to cater for the many
hundreds of levels of vision impairment. The current situation seems
to be that most designers do nothing about accessibility, a few make
an attempt and fail, but only a few get anywhere towards succeeding.
If a company/designer has a certain amount of time/money to spend on
accessibility, perhaps the best way to spend it would be to donate it
to free accessibility projects. I think this would probably have a
greater positive effect on the web. After all, the few people that do
spend any time at all on making their websites accessible, probably
aren't going to be experts in accessibility, so probably won't do a
very good job of it.
Perhaps the WSG would be a good institution for co-ordinating such a
scheme for donating money to accessible software projects?
Andy
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