QUESTION: what kind of design choices usually make text or other media inaccessible for you? (For example, use of strong colors, the way the text is displayed, etc.)
Lack of contrast and having a variegated or "busy" background behind the text makes me nuts.
Also text that is too small and can't be resized. For example, the street names on Google Maps on my phone, if I zoom in, the map size changes but he font size of the street names does not.
@Anna Good question and thank you for asking!
- small font (that I can't quickly make bigger)
- decorative fonts (that I can't quickly change)
- low-contrast font+background
- busy (textured) background
- very wide lines + low inter-line spacing
- images relevant to the text that don't have alt text
- images not relevant to the text that aren't marked as such (wasted time trying to decipher them)
- surprise visual movement that distracts from text (fly-overs, "clever" scrolling animations, etc.)
@Anna
Narrow columns, monospaced fonts, lack of space between lines and/or paragraphs
All things that make it easy for my eyes to skip words
Boosts are welcome, by the way!
@Anna My main problem these days is font size. Almost every web page I view is zoomed to 130% or so.
@Anna
Lightweight fonts, insufficient color contrast... Basically all the things mentioned here: https://www.wired.com/2016/10/how-the-web-became-unreadable/
@Anna When I use "zoom text only", and the line-width grows beyond, idk, 80% of screen-width, or worse, beyond 100% 😔
@Anna i'm dyslexic, so for me it's:
- size (smallness?)
- density (display and writing)
- weak contrast
- width (i can't focus if i have to follow a line for 12 meters)
- distracting stuff all around the text
all of this is the reason i almost exclusively read stuff using firefox' Readability, or Pocket.
@Anna On Masto, it's screenshots of text
And then when I click them to make them "readable," Masto shows a blurry version (??) of it until the real one loads, which takes a good ~ 30 sec on average
And then I either give up or have a headache!
@Anna (Btw, this *is* a design choice that makes it hard to read—the blurry version is a deterrent. Nearly anything else as a placeholder would be better, like one of those spinny things, or best-case: the alt text for the image.)
@Anna i can't read blue text on a white background or red text on a black background; i can barely read gray text on a white or light gray background (this last is unbelievably common right now).
@Anna
-low contrast
-small text
-animations or auto-played videos
-busy background
-colors
-not readable with Firefox reader
-not formated, very long Text in a row
@Anna from my viewpoint as someone with ADHD, in text: too small line spacing or too long lines. also, lack of contrast with background, too small font (that can't be easily resized).
@shadowfirebird @Anna @Cobalt
Mmmh. I'm looking at this for brutaldon. The webfont (fork-awesome) is used in default mode, and text links are used in fullbrutalism mode. I'm thinking about a bandwidth-saver mode that is independent of the theme, and of course, it won't use a webfont. The question is whether I shall use the closest Unicode character, or whether I shall use full text links.
@gcupc @shadowfirebird @Anna @Cobalt
I'm not good at front end, but some webfonts seem to be okay for me -- maybe it's the massive payload that tends to go with them that causes the problem.
Seems like there should be something between a light web font and typewriter. Personally I still go with `font family helvetica, verdana` etc… call me a philistine ;)
@shadowfirebird
@Anna @Cobalt
There's now a CSS font-display property that lets you set the webfont loading strategy. One option is "optional", which means if it doesn't load in 300ms, just skip it.
@Anna JavaScript that changes the focus and requires me to click somewhere in order to scroll with the keyboard. Mastodon's main UI is really bad about this with multi columns
@Anna
often my irritation comes from _absence_ of text. modern mobile ui is full of single-color icons that don't look like anything at all (tabs, buttons, links, menus) and which don't have any text labels. it all looks sleek, but doing anything complex is out of the question, and even doing simple things is a chore.
i talk to inanimate objects, and lately i often tell software to use its words, like a big boy.
sans-serif fonts are harder to read.
Red/green colour choices.
Unresizable text.
Video without closed caption (hearing problems).
@Anna too light light gray text on white background (I have old monitor at home).
@Anna dark backgrounds with light text in almost any shade/tone - I only started using Mastodon properly when someone linked me to a Stylish script, and now the light theme is finally built in I can use it without the add on!
@Anna critical info conveyed solely through background images
@Anna contrast with the background is a big one, and lack of dark or light themes at times (sometimes black text on white bg is too bright, but sometimes white text on black bg is blurry), and of course anything flashy and animated is distracting as hell.
also, long paragraphs with little line spacing are very hard to keep track of at times