Site Accessibility

[Ole Juul]

I have been having extreme difficulty posting. In the last week or so, there has been a 2 to 5 second delay between keystrokes, although it would buffer some before displaying. This does not happen on other vBulletin sites which I frequent.

Now I did some experimentation, and discovered that if I turn off the NoSquint plugin, voilà, it's all good again. I tried changing just text or just background but only a complete disable will do the trick. Perhaps there is a misconfiguration somewhere. I don't know why NoSquint would be selective but it does not play with this site any more.

So, now I've got another problem. The greyed out pastell text and baby blue links on a blindingly white background are rather difficult, actually I'd say unfriendly. Is there any possibility of being offered a second choice of vBulletin themes? To my sensibilities, something with clear text and not so bright a background would be a good choice from a communications perspective.

 

[modem7]

Perhaps there is a misconfiguration somewhere. I don't know why NoSquint would be selective but it does not play with this site any more.

On one computer, or multiple?

To my sensibilities, something with clear text ...

As you should see above, I see clear text (certainly according to my definition) not only at the VCF, but in almost everything that I do. I run Windows 7 and years ago:
1. Turned off ClearType; and
2. Turned off 'Smooth edges of screen fonts'; and
3. Made a change to FireFox so that it respected those settings (it was a bug at the time).

... and baby blue links on a blindingly white background are rather difficult, actually I'd say unfriendly ...

Are you saying that the "Blindingly white background" happens for the VCF, but not other web sites that use a white background?
If so, then I do not see that.

 

[Ole Juul]

On one computer, or multiple?

To answer that question I just tried another one running Iceweasel, installed NoSquint, set the colours, and here I am with no problem. Whatever the issue is, I'll need to find a solution if NoSquint isn't going to do it on my regular machine.

As you should see above, I see clear text (certainly according to my definition) not only at the VCF, but in almost everything that I do. I run Windows 7 and years ago:
1. Turned off ClearType; and
2. Turned off 'Smooth edges of screen fonts'; and
3. Made a change to FireFox so that it respected those settings (it was a bug at the time).

Thats not clear text to me. It's grey, and hard to read. "Clear" would be #000000 to my eyes. Yes, I've got a problem, but the idea with html, and web sites in general, is to provide information to be processed by the client, which is this case is me. I think that otherwise one would use an image or pdf. I hope I can find a good solution so that the VCF site becomes more accessible for me.

Are you saying that the "Blindingly white background" happens for the VCF, but not other web sites that use a white background?
If so, then I do not see that.

Bright white is very difficult for me to deal with. I always change it when I go to a site which uses it. Either that, or just avoid the site. In this case I don't want to avoid the site.

You can't see links in this shot, but this is what the above post looks like.

 

[Caluser2000]

modem7s post looks perfectly fine to me. Are you wearing any form of corrective lenses? I suffer from mild blue/green colour blindness and am longsighted. Also a bit deaf and suffered from serious head injury.

 

[Ole Juul]

modem7s post looks perfectly fine to me. Are you wearing any form of corrective lenses? I suffer from mild blue/green colour blindness and am longsighted. Also a bit deaf and suffered from serious head injury.

Just regular glasses. I've got a pair that is just right for computer monitor distance. I just have difficulty reading when it isn't clear text. That's one reason I like computers. I can use them to my advantage. I think that's what they're for.

I used to do a bit of hot lead typesetting. Black ink was considered more readable than grey ink, and was the norm. In fact, printers would strive to get the blackest impression possible. I always have difficulty reading. There is a tendency to not use strong contrast for text presentation on the web these days. That is difficult for me to read. A white background makes it very tiresome. I use green text on black in a terminal when I'm not browsing. Personally, I think web developers should do whatever they want, but so should those who are receiving the communication. However, there is nothing wrong with a web site catering to everybody and not just fresh young eyes - especially if its primary purpose is to communicate rather than being a work of art.

Edit: I just did an edit, and when I went to check it, I'd put the additional sentence in the completely wrong place. I really cannot do this easily. I love, and live for, text. But at this point in my life, I'm finding fashionable shades are not nearly as useful to me as the content is.

 

[Caluser2000]

Prescribed or off a $1 store stand? That's not ment to be offensive or anything. It''s just that last year her in doors finally convinced me to visit the optometrist. Hadn't been to one for over a decade. It out turned I was in dire need of close distance/reading glasses. Should have done it years ago. Made a hell of a difference. Can now digest all those dead tree manuals I've collected over the years.

Don't know what the issue is with your setup is but I'm certainly getting crisp black when posting. And that's on a number of platforms- 200mmx running Linux, P4 using XP to a year old Andriod tablet using a number of different web browsers.

 

[Ole Juul]

No offence taken. I'm using perscription glasses which are made for this distance. I've had difficulty reading for most of my life. I learnt to read with serif fonts, and the new sans ones also slow me down. All these problems are my own, but like I said before, computers are good for solving problems. For example, I use DOS and command line *nix, not because I'm any kind of nerd, but simply to solve my autistic and visual problems.

As for my setup, it seems like it's just some kind of interaction between my versions of Firefox, NoSquint, OS, and this site. Whatever. In working with it now, I think a change in "workflow" is the easiest solution. "Scrll-Lock Scrll-Lock 3" and I'm on the other computer where I'll leave this site up and NoSqint works. So, the solution in this case is simply to keep the site open on both computers. That's not a big deal. Three of my computers by my chair are on 24/7 exactly for the purpose of solving problems like this.

I'm not sure how you get "crisp black" on this site. I write a lot of web sites and am quite sure of the shade of grey I'm seeing here and where it's coming from. (here's my latest)

In any case, I still think it would be a nice gesture for this site to have another template choice. At the bottom is a drop down menu that vBulletin provides for exactly this, but it only has one choice so far. There's lots of old folks, autistic, and visually impaired people in the world who appreciate better readability (in its various forms) when they can get it.

 

[modem7]

Re 'blindingly white background".

I recently acquired a used, HP made, 24" LCD monitor, at a very low price. Connected it up to my computer in place of my trusty old NEC 2080UX+. Used a dual link DVI-D cable. Loaded the drivers (including ICC). Ensured that all settings (Windows + monitor) were at their defaults.

The screen was extremely bright; painfully bright. An internet search revealed it was a common complaint. I turned down contrast and brightness to discover that the image quality (sharpness + colour) decreased as well. Tried decreasing contrast and brightness at the video card rather than at the monitor. No change. To cut a long story short, I spent a good two hours trying all kinds of setting combinations/permutations, and finding no acceptable image quality at low screen intensity.

Same on a different computer. It was as though the engineers had designed optimum viewing at a very high intensity level, almost as though it was designed for outdoor use.

Out of curiosity, I tried my son's new LCD monitor (different brand, and has LED backlighting), and found a similar situation. He notices it but is not fussed.

Because the concept of wearing sunglasses whilst using a computer was unacceptable to me, I switched back to my trusty old NEC 2080UX+. When I next think about an upgrade, I will not purchase without seeing the monitor in operation (doing day-to-day type activities).

 

[Ole Juul]

I've got a problem with white backgrounds, but nevertheless most monitors are roughly the right brightness overall. However, a little while back I got an expensive monitor for my seetheart. She likes spreadsheets and documents open at the same time so a 27" IPS Glass hits the spot. It's very nice and very clear, but when we first turned it on it lit up the room like a grow light! Luckily it has an adjustment in the menu, but I had to get down to about 10% before it was "normal". Thats about 3 stops.

Whan you're coming from 21" or smaller, a 27" monitor looks huge! But two days later it looks normal. Funny how that works.

 

[Krille]

Re 'blindingly white background".

I experienced the same thing when I bought a Dell U3011 some time ago. I've had to reduce the brightness to the absolute minimum possible. At the default setting it was like staring into the sun (literally, I could feel the heat in my face).

However, I don't see this as a fault with the monitor. The problem is really the decades old idea that we should try to mimic ink-on-paper when in reality the opposite (ie bright text/foreground on dark background) is much better for the eyes (for everyone, not just the visually impaired). Not to mention the power savings that comes with it.

Although I have tried many times to implement this on my machines it's simply not possible because it breaks so many programs that are hardcoded to use a dark color for the text while using the system setting for the background, the end result being black on black. And Microsoft themselves are no better as even parts of Windows fail at this.

So, I'm with Ole on this. A "high contrast" color scheme on this forum would be very nice to have.

 

[Tor]

Not for everyone.. this is very individual. I remember the Facit terminals where you could choose between dark background and white characters, or the other way around. On that particular terminal I could only use the white background. Couldn't read the other variant. But a colleague had it the other way around, it was painful (literally) with my setting. It was such an astonishing difference in perception.

For many years now I have used a setting for my xterm terminal windows that I picked from Silicon Graphics: A kind of gray background with white characters. Called SGILightGray IIRC, I copy the /usr/lib/X11/rgb.txt file from SGI computers to get it.

 

[Chuck(G)]

Thanks for the tip on NoSquint. It makes a huge amount of difference on my system!

 

[deathshadow]

Rather than stuff like nosquint, I just set 8514/large fonts/120dpi/125%/win 7 medium/whateverthey'recallingitthisyear in the OS, and likewise change the default text size in the browser if the browser doesn't pick it up. (Opera 12 does, the pathetic crippleware that is ChrOpera doesn't... you can manually set the option in every browser as well...

Now, IF the skin of the viewed site was coded PROPERLY everything auto-enlarges 25%. Unfortunately steaming piles of developer ineptitude -- like Xenforo, phpBB, and yes vBulletin too -- where some ignorant halfwit declares all the font sizes in pixels, then you have to go a bit deeper.

... like the user.css I have to use to make forums like this one useful without diving for the zoom.

* {
	font-size:100% !important;
	line-height:150% !important;
	font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif !important;
}

body {
	font-size:85% !important;
}

.globalsearch,
.globalsearch .textboxcontainer span,
.postbit .userinfo .userinfo_extra, .postbit .userinfo_noavatar .userinfo_extra,
.postbit .userinfo .userinfo_extra dl,
.postbit .userinfo_noavatar .userinfo_extra dl {
width:auto;
}

.userstats dt {
  width:6em !important;
  text-align:right;
}

.userstats dd {
  overflow:hidden;
  width:13em !important;
  text-align:left;
}

.globalsearch input.textbox {
  width:10em;
}

.globalsearch .textboxcontainer {
  line-height:26px !important;
}

.globalsearch .textboxcontainer span {
  padding:0;
}

.bbcode_code {
height:auto !important;
font-family:consolas,monospace !important;
}

for those of you not familiar with user.css -- it's something Opera originated that you can add to other browser with extensions, where you can write CSS to override the styling used on sites when it's inaccessible trash.

No offense, but the moment you see font-size:14px on body, it's a sign that whoever made the site has no business making websites. PERIOD! There's a reason it's part of the "trifecta of /FAIL/ at web design" alongside fixed width layouts and illegible colour contrasts.

But I'm so used to it with vBullesh** and Xenforo, I just add the base font override above and maybe a minute or two of fiddling to dial it in. It's a shame so many off the shelf forum software reeks of "I can haz intarnets" HTML and "accessibility, what's that" design. Honestly with the completely inept bull that people vomit up and have the unmitigated gall to call websites that is the Internet of the past... 6 to 8 years, if it wasn't for things like user.css, user.js and my knowledge of how to fix this type of crap, I wouldn't even be able to use the Internet.

... and as it sits with half-assed haltwit bull like HTML 5, bootcrap, turdpress and jQuery pissing all over websites functionality, I'm actually coming very close to just pulling the plug on it entirely as no longer being viable for my use! The pathetically crippled 'future' of Opera slapping their logo on Chrome any-old-way certainly not helping things, which is why I'm stuck on Opera 12 for the foreseeable future.