Accessibility on Cups
Something I've been noticing becoming a prevalent issue mostly in user bios is the matter of accessibility, or rather, inaccessibility.
A lot of people dealing with severe eyesight problems, blindness, low vision, partial blindness, etc. need to make use of a screenreader to navigate their devices. A screenreader is a program that renders text on their device as speech; it will read things out loud. For example, someone using a screenreader reading this forum post would hear it being read aloud to them.
Many, many people on 7 Cups deal with blindness and even come here for support with it.
I've seen a lot of bios that use fancy fonts that just cannot be read by screenreaders. An example:
π―πͺπ·π¬π π―πΈπ·π½ (fancy font)
πππ§ππ² ππ¨π§π (fancy font)
When a screenreader tries to pick these up to read aloud, it usually can't--it'll either be completely silent or read out symbol by symbol depending on the font. On top of this, it can even be a problem for people that aren't blind--dyslexic people can struggle reading fancy fonts, too.
A lot of bios also make use of neon colors like bright yellow that are extremely difficult to read for most people, let alone people with eyesight problems.
When providing an image, it's very helpful to add an image description (ID), especially if that image has text on it. For example:
ID: A cup of tea being poured with biscuits on the side.
I just ask that everyone please raises awareness on the matter of accessibility. Don't use fonts in your bio or your content, and don't use difficult-to-read colors. Try to provide image or gif descriptions when necessary. A lot of people say, "Well, what are the chances of someone here using a screenreader?" and frankly it's a lot bigger than many would think.
@mnemosynes
This is super thoughtful of you to acknowledge, and pretty valid. We can all try to be a more inclusive and more accessible community for everyone definitely, being mindful of these little things that can have a lot of impact as well.
I'll try and make edits too where required, in my own bio here, thankyou for the reminder. β€
@mnemosynes
Agreed! and putting your bios in slightly bigger fonts for people who don't use screenreaders can help. i adjusted my bio to help with that. accessibility is important!
@mnemosynes Thanks! I try to keep this in mind but it's hard to know when a screen reading won't work. Do you know any checkers or anything like that!
This also made me realize I'm not sure if I put a description for a recent post, going to go check that!
@AffyAvo
I believe there are accessibility checkers for things like websites (for example, you're building a website and you want to ensure it's entirely accessible for people with disabilities). I don't know of any specific ones, though.
@mnemosynes Thanks!
I agree, i also use a screenreader for large amounts of text when my processing is down (i'm basically a really *** computer) and when its all in fancy fonts it makes it very hard for me, thanks for bringing this up!
oh it thought i said a bad word i just said old like from the 1980s
@mnemosynes Yes,I have tried talking to someone about this and they said I was rude because certain tests have misspelled words or don't make sense to start with. The fonts can be very hard to read too. I agree with you