Comments on: Defining “disablism”

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 20:13:45 +0000

Poor wording on my part, it was the same site with the text size increased using ‘ctrl +’. The content at larger text sizes wrapped without much issue as I set it in pt and was accessible. However, it was decided that the site needed a thorough navigation and had to work similarly and not take up much space so we needed a cross browser compat. menu that kept its proportion to the content as the text size increased.

In Firefox, Safari and IE the size increase is to the pt values of the fonts in use, in Opera it actually zooms the site (and images) by a percent. So I had to position elements with in em or pt.

To have the collapsible menu work when resized sub-menus had to be positioned without gaps otherwise the CSS hover property would be lost and all the sub-menu would rehide/collapse. For example if the proportions where out by 0.05em then a 100% size increase had them misaligned by the font-size * error * percent which for a the standard font size of 12pt (16px) is (16px * 0.05 * 100%) = 80px! Which is huge. So I had to keep trying different values at all 5 sizes until it worked; the time consuming bit.

Why 5 sizes? When I did the work I did some research and found a study somewhere that said that less than 2% of people used over 5 text size increases so I figure if it stays in proportion for 1-5 increases in theory it should for anything above that and if it didn’t it was still 98% compatible.

So as you say we did introduce a barrier (the menu) but the intention behind it was to make the site more accessible!

By: James

James — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 14:28:43 +0000

Hi Mike, thanks for your comment. I’m interested to know why you think there’s a need to build websites at 5 different scales? As long as you separate content from presentation and don’t lock down elements such as font size, users can customise your site themselves to better suit their needs. There should be no need to provide a separate ‘large text’ version, for example, although it’s pretty simple to throw in some style-switcher widgets if you want to offer that functionality too.

More often than not, building accessibility into website from the start is easier because you’re more likely to be using clean code and logical semantic markup. It’s often more about not introducing unnecessary barriers.

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 14:01:43 +0000

As someone who has made websites with visual constraints in mind I have to say its rather hard, and time consuming. As quoted above adding image descriptions is rather quick but designing 5 different websites (albeit the same one in sizes) is hard.

You get the proportions correct in one scale and find features are out of alignment in others. Freelancers generally work by the hour, doubling the time to make small business sites and passing on the increased costs to the owner isn’t something that will get you many recommendations.

Large corporate sites however have one or more people working day-in-day-out and have the time and resources to cater to all audiences.

So until everything used in html is scalable, and that scalability is included in the standard feature set I don’t think you’re going to get small sites being that considerate. Which is a shame.

By: James

James — Tue, 05 May 2009 09:36:29 +0000

Thanks for your comments everyone – I’m pleased to see that my amended definition seems to ring true.

Sarah, your post is very interesting reading; I’m proud to have been the inspiration for it!

By: Sarah Lewthwaite

Sarah Lewthwaite — Mon, 04 May 2009 10:04:58 +0000

Hi James, this is an excellent post and really got me thinking about aversive disablism and the web. As a result I’ve posted my thoughts, referencing your post directly at http://slewth.wordpress.com also as part of Blogging Against Disablism.

By: Lady Bracknell's Editor

Lady Bracknell's Editor — Sun, 03 May 2009 23:15:38 +0000

Nicely done.

I have never really been entirely happy with the DEMOS deifnition of disablism, as adopted by the TTGE campaign. I think your addition improves it immeasurably.

By: NTE

NTE — Fri, 01 May 2009 19:47:44 +0000

Excellent post! I think your definition of disabilism, and of an inclusive society are spot on!

By: Gary Miller

Gary Miller — Fri, 01 May 2009 18:03:01 +0000

James,

Nothing superfluous here. I really like your amendment to the definition of ‘disablism’ and particularly the piece on accessibility for the web.

The fight goes on….