CXL Club

[Andrew MacLean]

When I had my cataract (before surgery to sort it out) I yellow print on a blue background the easiest to see and read.

John, I thought that yellow and blue were perceived by the same receptors, so either of them ought to have the same sort of effect.

[John Smith]

Rosemary,

Actually, phpBB3 uses CSS exclusively now for all style purposes, so that's good.

Andrew,

Not sure, but I think that yellow light is picked up by both the red and green receptors (i.e. everything but blue)... one reason why yellow on blue tends to work well for people with decent colour vision.

[Lynn White]

The board now has a blue style to try out.

To try it, register and go to the user control panel, click Board preferences and select High_Vis_Blue from the drop down and click submit at the bottom

OK the yellow bit....

Andrew is right but I think the issue is more complex as it depends on WHY your vision is impaired as to what works and doesn't work. One thing to remember is that you don't "see" with your eyes, you see with your BRAIN. The retinal receptors pass the messages on but its your brain that has to make sense of it. As there are areas in the brain that react optimally to yellow, many people do see better with a yellow background. Others see better on blue (which is a complimentary colour to yellow.) I personally (as a "normal") found the yellow very OUCH!!! so reacted just like John!

What I am trying to achieve are a range of styles that are actually aimed at people with vision problems as opposed to the other way around, people with impaired vision having to choose styles that are available to normally sighted people and adapt them. It does seem right to do this for a board dedicated to people with visual probs.

Rosemary, as usual you have provided a feast of info - I will go and read!! Thank you!

Lynn

[James]

Hi, I am James and I am the one trying to implement a suitable style (or styles)

I have taken on board the username colour issue, and changed them to black for now. All colours/text sizes are stylesheet referenced as mentioned above, so shouldnt post a problem for those who want to go that way.

Please join the forum to use all of the functions and give me feedback. The more you tell me, the more I can make it suitable.

[Lynn White]

I should just point out that the forum James is referring to is JUST for trying out style sheets and their visibility. We are not saying that anyone should join the CXL Club forum!!

John has said that any such styles can also be incorporated on this forum, so here is your chance to input into the designs for here as well.

The style trial (hey that rhymes ) is at http://hi.daffie.me.uk/viewforum.php?f=2

Lynn

[rosemary johnson]

Hi.
I add a look at the new home page (not the discussion forum pages yet; will do that next).
I accept it is "work in progress", so comments below are meant as suggestions.
First, congratulations on the impetus to get it up and going.
I trust we will soon expect to see this site and the cXL one cross referenced from each - in view of the large interest in CXL from people with KC.
On the whole, it seemed to go OK in Lynx. I'm using the public acess lynx service at lynx.scramworks.net - anyone with a telnet on their machine can fo there and try it too - that will give a very good impression of web sites in text-only.
I saw a few places where the link was the word "here" - it would be ebetter to make the link text more explanatory - for example, the link would be "Download Dr THingummy's report", rather than a line onthe page saying "Download Dr Thingummy's report here" where the "here" is a lone-word link tag. This is because, if you are listening to a page with a screen reader, say, you might get it to read out the screen ful, then tab round the links to find the one you heard that sounds interesting. All too many pages, if you do this, you just get "Here", "here", "Click here", "here" - which is very unhelpful! SImilarly, many access technolgy users actually go to the page with the list of links of the page and step through them there. ANd here too, clearly, meaningful link names are vital.
I got a couple of places where there was a long string of apparent gibberish, inside [ ] and ending in .png, one of which was a link. I'm guessing these are graphics - but a sensible ALT= tag would be very helpful. [Note: I personally would be delighted to have ALT=' ' to hide all graphics that are merely decorative, and find alt tags describing pictures in the middle of continuous text in Lynx can be very confusing. However, users of eg. Jaws, which will tell them there is a graphic there,tend to prefer a descriptive alt tag even ig the picture is merely for decoration for sighteds.
I note from a quick scan of the source code of a couple of the pages that it would appear all the pages are coded up as cells in a table. Though this works out OK in this case in Lynx, I'd be interested to hear what other access tech users reckon to it. ISTR that using tables for formatting reasons isn't generally regarded as too good an idea, access-wise (but would refer to the standards bods on this).
I also noted from a quick scan of some source code that the home page has a otp heading defined as H1 heading, and the referenced pages have an H2 header. Not sure hw this will work with other sorts of acess tech - navigating by hearder and level of header is a main tool used by many AT users, so headers need to be used strictly to structure tha page and enable navigation around it.
As it expands, a "skip navigation" or "skip to main content" link may become useful (AT users value these).
On the page where you ask people who offer CXL treatmetns to contact you for a listing, the email address is spelt wrong - as lynn.whtie.
Hope this helps - If you're interested in feedback from users of a variety of ATs, and with a variety of different conditions, you might like to look up BCAB (British COmputer Association of the Blind) and maybe ask on the bcab mailing list if anyone would be willing to take a look and comment.
There are also various companies/agencies that do useability and accessibility testing.

As regards colour schemes: it strikes me, apart fromt he great variety of prersonal preferences, that one common link between your likely target audience is light sensitivity - it is a known "thing" that comes with KC - and anyone who has recently had a CXL and might be logging on to let folks know whow they got on, might well be especially photosensitive. So trying a make a "default" colour scheme (before the users change their own if they decide to) that minimises glare to give maximum chance to people with photosensitivity problems would be a logical approach.
My way of reducing glare because of photosensitivity is to set light letter (there are yellow as I type) on a black background; this makes the least possible area of screen actually light--emitting. I gather tha not-so-long ago, yellow-on-vlack or cyan-on-black had become fashionable.
Apologies for typing - have a flat battery on the synth and stinking cold so no lenses.
Rosemary

[Lynn White]

Hi Rosemary

Loads to digest and a lot of your points taken. One difficulty as such is that I simply do not have time to develop a website properly, as in build it, so I rely on templates provided by my hosting company. This means I can get content etc up and running within a day and add stuff quickly. For example, I have wanted to set up this project for a few months but only now had time over Xmas and New Year to grab a few hours to get it up and running.

So the difficulty is that the template system can sometimes be temperamental and works differently with different browsers. I take your point about the "here" links. It is done for speed and simplicity, as at the moment I am trying to get as much info up as I can while I have the time. After the end of this week, I am back working full throttle which will leave little time to develop the site.

To make the site better for access would mean building the site properly from the bottom up and frankly, I don't have the skills! I can build a basic site but that's it. I wouldn't even know how to start implementing some of the things you mention here.

So its not as much a case of asking organisations to look and comment - I do know enough to know I need to do this better - its a question of time and resources or finding someone who is willing to help to make it better once we have feedback.

This is why I am really grateful to James from the phpbb board. I merely went on there and posted asking for advice and he had the trial board up and running immediately.

As for the last section: you know I had figured that myself about glare, so found a yellow on black version style for the actual board and then asked a post CXL patient who is very photo sensitive to look at it. OUCH... YUCK! was the response... apparently the light letters bleed all over the dark background and make it impossible to read anything. So much for logic!!! hehe. So it seems really we have to make it as customisable as possible.

I will go and inwardly digest all of your post and check out the sites you mention. Meanwhile, if anyone out there has the necessary skills and would like to help on the technical side with the website.... then please contact me.

Lynn

[Lynn White]

Just to add...

Been browsing the sites you suggested, Rosemary, and I do see what you mean! I do have to get the CXL Club site more accessible but the bottom line is I don't have the skills!

SO again folks... if anyone with IT skills wants to help this project.......

Lynn

[Andrew MacLean]

James

Welcome to the forum; I almost did not notice you slipping in there!

Andrew

[Lynn White]

Hi All

I have now incorporated the forum into the site and started again. If you go to http://cxlclub.lwvc.co.uk/phpBB3indexphp.html then click the logo it will take you to the forum. The black on yellow is now the default but you can choose a more "normal"appearance like this forum if you want.

I now need feedback directly to this forum as to the visibility of this style and suggestions for other styles so that we can develop something that is a user friendly as possible.

Lynn