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Re: Making Content Accessible to Sighted Users?

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From: Brandon Keith Biggs
Date: Oct 6, 2016 7:52AM

Hello,
When do you bold? What is a place where you would use red, blue or green?
Black on white is the most obvious and simple to use, and I believe making
headings is fine, but I run into the problem a lot when making powerpoints,
how much text fits? I have literally walked into a presentation with my
beautifully crafted slides and got stopped halfway through by people asking
me what bullet points I was reading or telling me that the text was cut off
on the bottom.

Granted this is something running my powerpoint past a sighted person would
solve, but not everyone has their own sighted person to run things by. What
about if the sighted person doesn't understand what needs to be done? What
about if the sighted person you run things by argues with the sighted
person who gave you directions before? Who is right? All I know is to "make
it look good".
And today, I was working on a spreadsheet and I was told to make the text
color different based on different numbers. So I did, but when I ran it by
a sighted person, they told me that one cell was already a color I was
using as one of the conditional formatters. So what do I do then? The
person I was submitting the document to was the one who made that color,
and because I didn't see the document, I was not able to ask about that one
cell in particular. Now I have to wait till my next meeting with the person
I'm doing that excel file for to ask them this silly question. It is
holding up the whole project because this is the template, so if one thing
is wrong on this one, if I start filling in information in and the person
wants to change, I've got to go through every document and change this one
small thing that takes me a while to do with the keyboard.
But it is seemingly silly things like this that catch me up all the time.
Thanks,


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

On Thu, Oct 6, 2016 at 6:17 AM, JP Jamous < <EMAIL REMOVED> > wrote:

> 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.
>
>