Dave says accessibility comes down to simplicity. And I think there is elegance in simplicity. But so many times we see all the bells and whistles that pop up on a website that people think gives it an elegant beauty or makes it makes it more pleasurable to the eye. What ends up happening is it makes the website more difficult to use. And that isn’t to say that simple can’t be beautiful.
Thanks to Tenon for sponsoring the transcript for this episode.
Transcript
Nic
Hi, I’m Nic Steenhout. And you’re listening to the accessibility rules soundbite, a series of short podcasts where disabled people explain their impairments, and what barriers they encounter on the web. First, I need to thank Tenon for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Tenon provide accessibility as a service. They offer testing, training, and tooling to help fix this ability fast. Today I’m talking with Dave Brown. Hey, Dave, how are you?
Dave
Hey, Nic, I’m great. Thank you for having me on the show. I really appreciate it.
Nic
Thank you for coming on board and being willing to submit yourself to my questions.
Dave
It’s a pleasure. I’m usually on the other end of the microphone for these things. So I’m very happy to be a part of it.
Nic
Nice. Let’s start with with the first question, which is what’s your disability or your impairment?
Dave
So I’m legally blind. I was born an albino, which means that I’m light sensitive, as well as legally blind. It’s hard to really put a precise measurement on it. But I have about between 9% to 10% vision so I’m nearsighted and farsighted, can’t read small prints, can’t read things that are far away. And typically use in non technology world accessibility tools like magnifying glasses and telescopes in my day to day.
Nic
All right. So you’re not a screen reader user?
Dave
No, no, I’m someone who typically uses a lot of zoom technology. And someone who uses a lot of contrast, to make it easier for me to read the screen with my light sensitivity.
Nic
Right! I think that’s one of the things that a lot of people out there have this impression that if you’re legally blind, you automatically start using a screen reader. So it’s nice to have the echo from someone who doesn’t rely on that assistive technology.
Dave
Yeah, you’re absolutely right, that certainly we’ve come a long way with screen readers. And a lot of that voiceover technologies become very commonplace. But I think for someone like me, who’s who was born legally blind, and has always kind of adapted wanting larger fonts and zoom technology, some of that occasionally gets left out of the conversation.
Nic
Hmm. So that seems like a good segue. What would you say your biggest barrier on the web is?
Dave
For me, I it’s hard to describe it precisely. But what I’ll say is that when you’re using a lot of built in zoom features, so for example, inside a web browser, holding down Ctrl, and scrolling your mouse to zoom in, and make fonts look bigger. So often, that ends up disrupting the way in which information and buttons are presented on the screen. So for me, as I’m trying to maybe engage in something like online shopping, as I’m zooming in to try and make text bigger to read product descriptions, reviews, even just something simple, like price, size, shipping details, as I do that kind of zooming, what ends up happening is the boxes, which may require me to put in some information, address, name, credit card, a lot of those start to lose their functionality, because the buttons are not designed to be utilized in that way with that kind of zoom, or what ends up happening is the information becomes difficult to read, because it either jumbles together or disappears.
Nic
Hmm. It’s really nice to hear from a user. This is the kind of stuff that I tell clients, when I do audits, you know, you can’t do that. Because folks, were legally blind folks with low vision that need to increase page size, resize. reflow are going to have problems. But hearing it from from the horse’s mouth is fantastic. Not that I think you’re a horse, Dave.
Dave
I do eat like a horse, though. So there is that?
Nic
Hey, if you had one message for designers or developers, about accessibility, what would that be?
Dave
I think it comes down to simplicity. And I think there is elegance in simplicity. But so many times we see all the bells and whistles that pop up on a website that people think gives it an elegant beauty or makes it makes it more pleasurable to the eye. What ends up happening is it makes the website more difficult to use. And that isn’t to say that simple can’t be beautiful. There’s all kinds of things you can do with edges or your boxes that make it work. But if it takes away the clarity and the surfing experience for me as a user, it means that I’m oftentimes going to stay with websites that that make it easier for me to interact with it. The other thing I’ll say, and I probably should have mentioned this in my last answer is that be mindful of the fact that some people are going to be inversing colors in their browsers. I guess some folks would call dark mode, which they do to make it easier to go to bed at night is something that I will use on my screens to make it easier for me to read. But so oftentimes, I’ll be in an app or I’ll be on the web. And when you do that in version, all of a sudden, it becomes more difficult to actually go through the processes of hitting the buttons to move forward. So I would, I would say, the overall simple message, I know, you asked me for a simple answer, and I started rambling, because that’s what I do as a broadcaster, I would say the true answer is find a way to present your stuff in a simple way that’s easy to navigate. That’s not going to be disrupted by alterations.
Nic
Thank you. Something occurred to me as you were talking about the built in functionality for resizing pages, have you come across overlays, when you surf? And if you have, What’s your feeling on these so called accessibility overlays.
Dave
I haven’t necessarily meshed too much with those overlays. I, what I will say is people that I have discussed them with have generally been not too pleased with sort of the one size fits all solution, but personally, I haven’t necessarily noticed them. But Nic, the ultimate confession here is I’m a little bit of a Luddite, so even if I was kind of working through them, I wouldn’t even know.
Nic
That that’s fair enough, that’s fair enough. Thank you, Dave. Youve been a fantastic guests and I look forward to listening to your show.
Dave
Hey, Nic, it’s my pleasure to be here. I’m so glad you invited me on. I love this micro podcast idea definitely changes the two hour show format that I run every day.