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Many of you watching this have normal vision.
Oh, sure you might have to find your reading glasses if you want to read a
good book
and you might have to make sure that there's enough light around see it,
but for the most part many of you see rather well.
For others, seeing things clearly
isn't quite so easy. For example, how do people with less than perfect vision
use the web? What kinds of technology is available,
and what can web designers do to make their pages
easier to use by people who don't see quite so clearly.
Vision loss can take many forms
and it can be mild were quite extreme. For example some people have
hypersensitivity to glare,
while others may be colorblind. Some
might see an entire image, but it might be either blurred or clouded.
While others might see the center of the image
often referred to as tunnel vision. And others still
might see the edges of the image, often called
peripheral vision. Hello,
my name is Neil Ewers and I work for the Trace Research and Development
Center which is a part of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
I, too, happen to have a vision condition. I
am totally blind. I have my friend John Klatt here today.
I've asked him to come and talk to us about his specific vision condition
and how he uses technology to access the web.
Hi John, it's good to have you. I know, thank you for having me. Can you
begin by telling us a little bit about who you are,
and how you do use technology to access the web.
Sure, I'm a graduate student here UWM also employed by the University.
I have a form of macular degeneration that has taken
a good part of my central vision and although my
visual acuity is below 2200 I'm usually able to use
most printed material, such as web pages,
as long as they're blown up by a power of four.
I can show you briefly how I
navigate not only computer technology but specifically the web.
I use a screen enlargement program called zoom text,
and as you can see, it enlarges everything
on the screen. It makes everything all of the print nice and big and easy to read
And it's one of the features that I
I like about zoom text is that it comes with a couple different options. One of the
problems with having the screen so large
is that only a portion the screen actually fits onto
my monitor at one time so it's very easy to
kinda become disoriented or
or lose track of where I am. John, the reason I said
'who' was the fact that I realized that when you zoom
as highly as you can zoom you must only be able to read one
two or three words at a time and that's kinda like what happens to me when I use
my screen reader which
speaks and therefore I only hear one word at a time so
I would guess that if you had vision and that
low enough to have to have that kinda magnification
it'd be really hard to figure out what was on the screen. It can become very
difficult especially as magnification goes up.
I can adjust the magnification so that
essentially one word are just two numbers are fitting on the screen
and in those situations it becomes very disorienting. One of the ways to
get around that problem is to simply switch the function
of the magnification. This option is actually like a
a handheld magnifier where only the portion under the magnifying box
actually becomes magnified. With this option I can actually see the entire
a document I'm working on or the entire webpage that I'm working with
but at the same time I can magnify the
the pieces that I really need to see. On this page
while I can't see any of the exact text I can tell that there's
account with information on the left there appears to be come with more
detailed information on the right
and up in the right-hand corner it looks like there's
something could possibly be links. I'm looking for.
pieces of information that give me context to what the page is all about
I'm also looking for pieces of information that match the context
of the task in trying to
complete time can you give us an example
sure a a couple months ago I was doing a research project
on using human subjects in research
and this particular page is one that I came to quite often.
There are symbols next to each of these
blanks and each of these symbols represent a different issue in human
subjects research
and when I found is after coming to the page a number of times
I no longer had to start to differentiate between
the headings and the descriptions of the headings in the various links
all I needed to do was find the appropriate symbol
and click on the link and I could access the page that I wanted
This was a a perfect example of
how context can actually guide my task and can actually facilitate
the work that I'm doing. John do use color at all to
figure out how to get around the page? Yeah actually
color is a pretty important element of page.
On the UW home page up in the right-hand corner there's a list of links
and the top row of links is in red
and the row of links right below that is orange.
It's easy to distinguish between these links I don't necessarily confuse them
as one
The screen magnifier obviously enlarges the text but
it doesn't necessarily prevent me from making simple mistakes I'm not I'm still
not reading it real clearly
and this simple use of color creates a distinction that
was very helpful. John you can see color but there are a number people who are
colorblind
and if for example you went to a page it had stocks
and their green ones were going up and the red ones are going down
you'd be lost. Yeah, I certainly would
and you're right I can distinguish the colors and that's a big help for me
For those people who are colorblind I know that some magnification software
comes with different settings that try to accommodate that.
They'll filter in certain colors or filter out certain colors
you can change the background setting so there are some things that
that can be done. What about spacing, John?
Does the spacing out text and other elements on a page
help? Yeah, it really does
because of the way the magnification software works
a little extra spacing between lines in a little extra spacing between
links actually helps me quite a bit when pages become
too cluttered and there's too much information packed into a small area
it actually becomes fairly confusing to try to
figure out what the text is saying and and follow where I am on a page
and honestly sometimes it becomes a little overwhelming. This UW home page
actually contains a great deal of information there's an awful lot of
our resources and links to other pages but as you can see there's a tremendous
amount of space. There's
a lot of space in between the lines. The print is nice and big even without the
magnification software.
Things certainly do not look cluttered.
and because of that I find it very easy to use. Do you ever use
shapes like blocks of texts or
boxes or anything like that to help get around?
Certainly. Shapes are similar to
color and space and that they help me understand what's on the page
Blocks of texts, search bars,
positioned somewhere in there on the page
give me clues as to where to find particular things on
on the web page and I think that
web designers with you know some careful thought about how they're using color
shape and space
really help people navigate their task.
I know that you're magnification software can speak as well as magnify
and it would seem to me that if you were losing a lot of your vision
being able to hear something and see it at the same time would be really helpful.
Can you show us how that works? Sure. The magnification software that I use
has something called the dock reader and it will read all of the text on the page
and at the same time it will put the text on a ticker at the top of the page
so you get a chance to hear it as well as see it
lakeland the University of wisconsin-madison
Search My UW Quick Links Timetable
Directories Employment Help News and Events Events Calendar UW-Madison to require
writ-- One of the added benefits of having the text go through the ticker
is that all the text become standardized so if
the page has text this in a lot of different
fonts or a different sizes or if it's in red and difficult to read,
as it goes through the ticker, it all because one size,
it becomes a style of font that is very easy to read and it's white text on
a black background. That would seem to be awful easy for a
lots of people with different conditions like color blindness to use. Can you use
that without having it speak?
Yeah, yeah, and that's actually the way I usually use it.
You mention font, John, and I know that font size and font family are really
important and should be things that
web developers keep in mind. I think your right and
font color and background are also important to me.
Well, John, I'd have to say that you've certainly helped me,
a person who is totally blind, understand a lot more
about what it's like for you to navigate the web,
and if you can show me a, totally blind person,
how it is, then you've obviously spoken to a lot of other people as well.
i really appreciate your being here. Thank you for having me I had a good
time.