Comments on: Cognitive accessibility testing

By: Web Axe Link Roundup – December 2010 « The BAT Channel

Web Axe Link Roundup – December 2010 « The BAT Channel — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 19:07:45 +0000

[...] Cognitive Accessibility Testing from Here’s One Solution [...]

By: David Owens

David Owens — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 08:33:08 +0000

Hi John, thanks for posting. It looks like your website is a great resource. I'm looking forward to reading through the experiments you've been doing.

By: @ClearHelper

@ClearHelper — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 00:11:35 +0000

Hi David and everyone, I appreciate this article. I am pleased to see commentary about cognitive Web accessibility. That area is the focus of my blog, Clear Helper -http://bit.ly/8hR8Ge -. Germane to this discussion is my recent post, "Web Accessibility Insights from 6 Women with Intellectual Disabilities" -http://bit.ly/cF1BgN -. In it, I describe how I too learned a lot just by watching them use Web sites. One of the subjects about which I have blogged is that of text-size switching. I have tried different approaches. The women reacted favorably to my latest experiment -http://bit.ly/9c9V8u - but were confused by my attempt at instructions on using browser-based text resizing. Finally, of interest might be my post, "Lessons on Web Site Usability by People with Cognitive Disabilities" -http://bit.ly/bVj30n. It is a brief summary of the Standards.Next conference to which David refers.

By: David Owens

David Owens — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 21:37:38 +0000

I hadn't noticed that 20 character limit. I'm thinking of ditching the IntenseDebate comments as they don't really add anything not WP has threaded comments, so that's another black mark.

By: Gonzalo González Mora

Gonzalo González Mora — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 21:18:39 +0000

Really interesting post, David What surprised me the most was the HTML/CSS controls for the Flash player, I wouldn’t have though about that issue, so whenever I need to implement that I’ll try to remember your suggestion

I hope we start seeing more cognitive-related posts because, as you say, it’s a really misunderstood and under-researched area at this moment.

PS: I had to disable JS to comment because it wanted to trim my full name to 20 characters (same thing happened with Twitter’s name field; ridiculous)

By: David Owens

David Owens — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 15:41:54 +0000

Hi Bobby, thanks for the comment. My first one

I think you’re right, it would be better if browser manufacturers made text re-sizing tools more prominent. I have a vague memory of one of the early browsers doing just that. A quick look on Wikipedia produced this screenshot of IE3.

I’m quite suprised to hear that those buttons aren’t available to add to Firefox, but I just checked on my Mac and that’s the case there.

If those options were there, then maybe the next step would be presenting the chance to customise the toolbars the first time you load the browser.

By: Bobby Jack

Bobby Jack — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 14:07:12 +0000

The info. about text resizing widgets is interesting and useful, however annoying it may seem! However, there are so many disadvantages with the use of such widgets, that I can't help but think there's a better solution.

Firefox doesn't seem to support adding the text scaling functions to the toolbar. Opera and Safari do offer page zoom but seemingly not text scale. If all browsers offered these icons as a customisable standard, wouldn't that be the best solution?