suggestion for style documentation

[jadelennox]

I'm curious as to whether or not I am the only person who ends up having accessibility issues when people modify their styles to change the text of basic features. Specifically:

1. It's bad enough when the text goes back and forth between two different standards (e.g. "user info" versus "profile").
2. It's worse when the text is something the style designer came up with to be original but which still carries clear meaning (e.g. "about me").
3. It's extremely difficult when the text is all flavor and doesn't convey much meaning (e.g. "happy tracks in the sand").

Am I the only person for whom this is an accessibility issue? If this is a general issue and not just me, perhaps we could write some documentation and propose it to the style team as guidelines for what kind of textual changes are worth avoiding if you really care about accessibility in your style. Since end-users can change those texts, not just style designers, we could come up with something brief and nonintimidating for the customization pages.

(By the way, I know I was working on a couple of open accessibility tickets, and I vanished for several months due to personal issues. I'm back as of this week, and have started looking at those tickets again. Sorry for the vanishing.)

Comments

[jackandahat]

I feel this gets into arguments of how far a person should go to accomodate other people - who they might well not have invited into their space.

In a community, where many people can reasonable expect to be accomodated, then it's a fair enough point - it should be accessible to all members. But a personal journal is personal. I understand it's not private unless it's locked, but it is that person's space.

For example - I swear. A lot. In a community like this, I'm not going to because I don't know the audience. In my journal, I'm going to swear as much as I feel necessary because it's my space, and people who are there know what to expect. I wouldn't expect someone to come in uninvited and say "Modify your language because I want to read this."

[jadelennox]

I certainly wasn't arguing that we should prevent people from changing the text. But one thing I've discovered since I became a dreamwidth accessibility advocate is a lot of people have come up to me and said "teach me how to improve accessibility! I don't know how but I want to." What I was suggesting we do is give people the documentation to write more accessible styles, which people seem to want.

It's a big difference from telling people what they can and can't do.

That being said, amadi is right about style = mine, which makes the point moot.

[jeshyr]

I think putting together a "How Can I Make My Personal Journal More Accessible" document is a fantastic idea, and it's certainly something I've got lots of suggestions about :)