Neal Ewers: 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 there’s enough light around to 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 kind 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 or quite extreme.
For example, some people have hypersensitivity to glare,
while others may be colorblind.
Some may 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 Neal 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.
John Klatt: Hi Neal. Thank you for having me.
Neal: Can you begin by telling us a little bit about who you are,
and how you do use technology to access the web?
John: Sure. I’m a graduate student here at U.W. I’m 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 20/200,
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 ZoomText,
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.
One of the features that I like about ZoomText
is that it comes with a couple of different options.
One of the problems with having this screen so large
is that only a portion of the screen actually fits on to my monitor at one time.
Neal: Ooh!
John: So it’s very easy to kind of become disoriented or lose track of where I am.
Neal: John, the reason I said ooh was the fact
that I realized that when you zoom as highly as you can zoom,
you must only be able to read one or two or three words at a time and that’s kind of 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 low enough
to have to have that kind of magnification,
it would be really hard to figure out what was on the screen.
John: It can become very difficult, especially as the magnification goes up.
I can adjust the magnification so that essentially
one word or 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 hand held magnifier where
only the portion under the magnifying box actually becomes magnified.
With this option I can actually see the entire document that I’m working on,
or the entire web page that I’m working with,
but at the same time I can magnify 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 a column of information on the left,
there appears to be a column of more detailed information on the right,
and up in the right hand corner it looks like there is something.
It could possibly be links.
I’m looking for pieces of information that give me context as to what the page is all about.
I’m also looking for pieces of information that match the context of the task I’m trying to complete.
Neal: John, can you give us an example?
John: Sure. A couple of months ago I was doing a research project
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 links.
And each of these symbols represents a different issue in human subject research.
And what 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 and 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 perfect example of how context can actually guide my tasks and can
actually facilitate the work that I’m doing.
Neal: John, do you use color at all to figure out how to get around a page?
John: Yeah, actually color is a pretty important element of the 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 in 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 still not reading it real clearly,
and the simple use of color creates a distinction that is very helpful.
Neal: John, you can see color, but there are a number of people who are colorblind.
And if for example you went to a page that had stocks,
and the green ones were going up and the red ones were going down, you’d be lost.
John: Yeah, I certainly would and you are right,
I can distinguish the colors and that’s a big help for me.
For those people who are color blind, I know that some magnification software comes with
different settings that try to accommodate that.
They’ll filter in certain colors and filter out certain colors.
You can change the background setting, so there are some things that can be done.
Neal: What about spacing John? Does the spacing of text
and other elements on a page help?
John: Yeah it really does.
Because of the way the magnification software works,
a little extra spacing between lines and 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 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 are an awful lot of resources and links to other pages.
But as you can see there’s a tremendous amount of space.
There’s a lot of space 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.
Neal: Do you ever use shapes like blocks of text or boxes
or any thing like that to help get around.
John: Certainly, shapes are similar to color and space and that they help me understand what’s on the page.
Blocks of text, search bars positioned somewhere in the page give me clues as to
where to find particular things on the web page.
I think that web designers with some careful thought about
how they’re using color, shape, and space really help people navigate their task.
Neal: I know that your 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?
John: Sure. The magnification software that I use has something called the Doc Reader.
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.
ZoomText Speech Synthesizer: Play button. The University of Wisconsin Madison.
UW Search. My UW. Quick links. Timetable.
Directories. Employment. Help. News and Events.
Events Calendar. UW Madison to require…
John: One of the added benefits of having the text go through the ticker
is that all of the text becomes standardized.
So if the page has text that’s in a lot of different fonts,
or different sizes
or if it’s in red and difficult to read,
as it goes through the ticker it all becomes one size,
it becomes a style of font that’s very easy to read,
and it’s white text on a black background.
Neal: That would seem to be awful easy for lots of people with different conditions like colorblindness to use.
Can you use that without having it speak?
John: Yes and that’s actually the way I usually use it.
Neal: You mentioned font, John and I know that font size and font family are really important
and should be things that web developers keep in mind.
John: Yeah, I think you’re right and font color
and background are also important to me.
Neal: Well John, I 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 you being here.
John: Thank you for having me. I had a good time.