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Re: Making Content Accessible to Sighted Users?

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From: JP Jamous
Date: Oct 6, 2016 7:17AM

I agree with Karen that a blind individual should be able to write a visually appealing document. I do recommend certain things though.

1. If the person was born blind and has no sense of colors, the person cannot be blamed for that. I was not born blind and had full vision for the first 12 years of my life. However, I still run the colors by someone sighted to ensure they appeal to the reader's eye. Even that part can be tricky as some sighted people can have their own favorite colors and like to stick with those all the time. The most important thing is to know your audience. For example, when I am working with Executives, I am strictly black font on a white background. They could care less about colors. Just bold the information they want or throw a bullet before it. That is sufficient. If the audience is younger managers, I might add blue, red and other colors.

2. With all of the tools that a screen reader offers, there is no reason why a blind person should not be able to create a nicely looking document. I have written documents that were 65 pages in length and have kept the right font, bullets, bold and other attributes.

3. I make my own resume with MSWord and after I am done I run it by my sighted wife. Mostly, to ensure that visually things align properly since JAWS screws that up sometimes. She even has to use a ruler to check as even Word does not give her an accurate measurement.

So as you see, for the most part a blind individual can create a nicely written document. Just follow a sequence that works for you to keep track of your changes.

I write at first and do not concern myself with spelling, or font stuff. As I am done I review to ensure the document is written properly without any spelling errors and with proper grammar. After That, I worry about the styling part of it.

-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Karlen Communications
Sent: Thursday, October 6, 2016 7:30 AM
To: 'WebAIM Discussion List' < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Making Content Accessible to Sighted Users?

Along time ago I taught both a community college course in WordPerfect (see, long time ago) and a course for people who were blind or visually disabled on how to use WordPerfect. The final project for both groups was to create a newsletter complete with masthead, images (there was no Alt Text back then), columns and so forth...everything a newsletter should have.

When you put the newsletters from both groups side by side you couldn't tell who did or didn't have a disability.

I taught the principles of good design and provided keyboard commands and information on colour, colour contrast, concepts of newsletters...everything someone would need to create a well structured newsletter.

For those who were blind or who had colour deficits, we worked collaboratively and the "rule" was that you got someone to check over your work to make sure the colours were good and the layout was what you described to them....but if things were off, it was up to you, not the person reviewing your work for those types of thing, to fix it.

This worked well in both classes and I see no reason that, when taught good design and accessible document design and how to use the authoring environment and their adaptive technology that someone who is blind or visually disabled cannot create accessible digital content and environments like anyone else. Work should be reviewed for the more esthetic things like colour contrast and anything that looks off but the person who creates the content/software should be the one to remediate it because then they learn how to make better content/software.

Cheers, Karen

-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Brandon Keith Biggs
Sent: October 6, 2016 5:24 AM
To: WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: [WebAIM] Making Content Accessible to Sighted Users?

Hello,
I am wondering if any kind of thought has ever been put towards how blind creators and designers can make their content visually appealing? Most of this has to do with the fact blind people have no idea what looks good and their screen reader doesn't have a setting that says "Looks good" or "Can you move that element to the right because it is covering some text?"
But this is a huge problem because one can have the most amazing and easy to use application or product, but if it doesn't look good, then no sighted person is going to touch it.
What this means is that if a blind programmer wishes to do front-end design, they can't unless they can make something that looks good. This means that if a blind person wishes to make a Word document or Excel file, they can make their content, but the first sighted person who reads it is going to go crazy at all the differently sized fonts, the extra spaces that are not visible to the screen reader and different sizes of text.
So just as there is a checklist for creators to make their content accessible to people with AT, there should be a checklist for people with AT (primarily screen reader users) to make their content accessible to sighted users.

I have asked blind programmers what they currently do and the responses are not very reassuring. Some use prebuilt templates and just don't mess with the defaults, some have a sighted designer who makes the site look good and others don't do front-end.
But this is a problem I think is really big when it comes to blind people and employment. Because if a blind person needs to make a document that is distributed to all the employees, make promotional materials, create templates for others to use or make powerpoints to present to bosses or clients, there is going to be no trust, either by the blind person or their colleagues, that the blind person can make a usable document without help.

I would like to know if anyone knows of any resources or guidelines for making content accessible to sighted users?
Thanks,

Brandon Keith Biggs <http://brandonkeithbiggs.com/>;