For blind internet users, the fix can be worse than the flaws
1–10 of 52 posts
Re: For blind internet users, the fix can be worse than the flaws
#2These tools seem like such a lazy solution to something as important as accessibility.
Re: For blind internet users, the fix can be worse than the flaws
#3Re: For blind internet users, the fix can be worse than the flaws
#4As somebody who is struggling with declining vision, all I can say is: being blind sucks, and no framework can adequately compensate for it
Re: For blind internet users, the fix can be worse than the flaws
#5As somebody who is struggling with declining vision, all I can say is: being blind sucks, and no framework can adequately compensate for it
As a descendant of a totally blind man, but with like 20/12 vision myself, I just have to agree. Dude eyes are the ultimate threat detector, they're essential, and there's so many people trying to take advantage of vision impairment. They need it to be perfect stereotypical blindness to give a single unit of fuck about the problem, no compensating for limitations, all or nothing. Never look from another point of view. Plus all the fake-blind beggars taking advantage of the sympathy that ought to be reserved for the legitimate blind or vision-impaired, of which there are enough as it is.
Oh but you know how I help my vision when it starts declining now and then? Eat fish oil, very pure no mercury, eat it, six softgels a day and your vision will improve. Eyes are almost pure omega-3 omega-6 and omega-9 fats, in the lens and retina. Declining vision is basically due to your body rearranging its unsaturated fat reserves, with which it is endowed at birth and never gets more of. Some people their ears start to go, others their mind start to go (and that's why I was prescribed fish oil by a psychiatrist, but like one a day get real doctors need to up the dose), other people their joints or their heart. You can't just eat fish, the mercury completely undoes the effect. It's not found in nature. Only in labs. It's the fat endowment.
And that's the framework for compensating for blindness: not being blind in the first place. Undoing it. Dude you can eat 15 softgels a day.
Re: For blind internet users, the fix can be worse than the flaws
#6As somebody who is struggling with declining vision, all I can say is: being blind sucks, and no framework can adequately compensate for it
As a descendant of a totally blind man, but with like 20/12 vision myself, I just have to agree. Dude eyes are the ultimate threat detector, they're essential, and there's so many people trying to take advantage of vision impairment. They need it to be perfect stereotypical blindness to give a single unit of fuck about the problem, no compensating for limitations, all or nothing. Never look from another point of view…
Curious, what brand of fish oil, and after how many days did you notice an effect on your vision eating "six softgels a day"?
Re: For blind internet users, the fix can be worse than the flaws
#7As somebody who is struggling with declining vision, all I can say is: being blind sucks, and no framework can adequately compensate for it
As a descendant of a totally blind man, but with like 20/12 vision myself, I just have to agree. Dude eyes are the ultimate threat detector, they're essential, and there's so many people trying to take advantage of vision impairment. They need it to be perfect stereotypical blindness to give a single unit of fuck about the problem, no compensating for limitations, all or nothing. Never look from another point of view…
Honestly. My eye sight started improving when I started riding my bike everyday.
So. Do you have a brand of fish oil we all can look into and research?
Re: For blind internet users, the fix can be worse than the flaws
#8Increasingly I think the screenreader/ARIA proposition of navigating a (linearized ordering of) elements on a 2D page is fundamentally limiting for blind users. The web needs a more robust model of application state from which text, audio, and GUI representations can be derived. Our applications clearly structure "objects" and their "methods" under the hood, and it should be possible to present these more directly to users in whatever format makes sense to them.
Re: For blind internet users, the fix can be worse than the flaws
#9Increasingly I think the screenreader/ARIA proposition of navigating a (linearized ordering of) elements on a 2D page is fundamentally limiting for blind users. The web needs a more robust model of application state from which text, audio, and GUI representations can be derived. Our applications clearly structure "objects" and their "methods" under the hood, and it should be possible to present these more directly to…
That would require some regulation, since commercial web design deliberately obfuscates the underlying structure.
Re: For blind internet users, the fix can be worse than the flaws
#10I have ranted about this before here, many times.
When I worked at the university, doing their websites, I simply could not get accessibility on anyone's radar: my boss, the people in the power structure nearby, the awful design people who saw the Web as a means to deliver photography and, if forced, text in a brochure format.
I had my own tools -- making sure the XHTML and CSS were valid, testing on multiple browsers, testing on lynx, a separate PC with jankety mouse settings to make it hard to click and a few sets of glasses to distort my vision, etc. Accessibility has to be a first class citizen when you make that template, it cannot be bolted on later. And it means being rigorous: fill out that alt text, test that tab order. I had no budget, just raw stubbornness and a willingness to be the bad guy.
It was continually infuriating that nobody cared about people with low vision, or crap bandwidth, or colorblindness, or motor tremor, because, barring an early death or really great health, we're all liable to enter one or more of these groups with time.
The last, sad argument I had, which worked and was shameful, is that good accessibility almost automatically makes your SEO better. It is both true and mildly upsetting to have to resort to, I felt like I was saying "... also, orphans are more gamey than other kinds of meat."
I don't think you can Javascript your way out of these very real problems. What is needed is an Accessibility Czar for your web properties, who can veto anything, who can pull off their shoe and pound it off the table and force someone on the Design Team to wear a little duncecap as they read out an article on Target getting mauled by the ADA for their screwups.