[NFBCS] Websites, Visual Inspection

Sat Aug 17 22:22:55 UTC 2019

Hi,

This might have worked in the past, but it doesn't work much this way
anymore. Those who have done it for some time might have a foot in the door.
However, new development with new contractors presents new problems. Sighted
clients and sighted coworkers will not put up with a new contractor/worker
who needs another person looking over your shoulder to verify site design.
You had better have a good idea on what the design should look like. If not,
at least have a good idea on how the CSS makes the site design come to life.
Been there, done that... Most of the problems with blind web designers
coming up out of school is that they never had the chance to learn CSS along
with their sighted counterparts. Now you can... I am creating an NVDA add-on
that assists a blind/VI developer with creating visually appealing user
interfaces. Head over to http://www.groups.io/g/nvda-developer-toolkit to
sign up for the mailing list. Download it at
http://github.com/ajborka/nvda_developer_toolkit. Let me know what you
think.

-----Original Message-----
From: NFBCS <nfbcs-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Peter Donahue via NFBCS
Sent: Saturday, August 17, 2019 3:30 PM
To: 'NFB in Computer Science Mailing List' <nfbcs at nfbnet.org>
Cc: Peter Donahue <pdonahue2 at satx.rr.com>
Subject: [NFBCS] Websites, Visual Inspection

Hello everyone,

	At the end of the day it's not how you think the site should appear
visually but how the customer wants it to appear. Here is where calaborating
with the customer so he/she can inspect their site pages when the site is in
production can help a blind Web developer deal with the visual side of site
design. I did this in the past with several sighted customers. They told me
how they wanted their site to appear. It was my job to come up with the
proper code to make these appearances possible. Once the pages were created
I would have them inspect them again so the design could be fine-tuned. 

	If the site was for a blind customer. I would have one of my sighted
assistants along with one of theirs check the site's appearance to be sure
everything was the way the blind customer wanted the finished website to
look. This aspect of Website design is only an obstacle if you make it one.

Peter Donahue

-----Original Message-----
From: NFBCS [mailto:nfbcs-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Timothy
Breitenfeldt via NFBCS
Sent: Saturday, August 17, 2019 11:52 AM
To: NFB in Computer Science Mailing List
Cc: Timothy Breitenfeldt
Subject: Re: [NFBCS] Css, Building It From the Ground Up

I can agree with that, my trouble is that as a nearly blind programmer,
visual layout is very hard to design. I have heard many people talk on this
mailing list about how to write CSS with Jaws or NVDA, but the meta data
screen readers give about the style of the page only is helpful if you have
a mind that can visually represent what you want the page to look like to
begin with. I have had little sight for most of my life, and just don't
really have a good understanding of what actually looks visually appealing.

To add to the discussion though, I will say that building your site from the
ground up is definitely the most flexible approach. As far as CSS goes, I
learned about a technology on my last project called SAS (syntactically
awesome style sheets), I did not make that acronym up.
It is a super-set of CSS that provides an object oriented way of writing
your styles. It seemed like a very useful way of approaching styling.

Also, I think there is a place for bootstrap as well, it seems that if
someone is willing to write half the styles for you, why not use them?
That is the philosophy of every other programming language.

Honestly I can't say much, most of my experience has been working with other
people who are styling the site while I write the Javascript and backend
code.

TJ Breitenfeldt
On 8/17/19, Peter Donahue via NFBCS <nfbcs at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> Hello Greg and everyone,
>
> 	I'll second what you said about CSS. You can make lots of changes 
> site-wide by linking all of its pages to a CSS. These days CSS 
> lay-outs
are
> preferred over table lay-outs. Sites built and layed out using a CSS 
> tend to be more screen reader-friendly.
>
> 	Over the years I've tried various Website creation tools and CMS 
> systems and always came back to building Websites from the ground up. 
> A great jumping off point is creating a basic template you will use to
create
> all of your site's pages. Investing in learning HTML5, CSS, and 
> Javascript allow you to creat awesome Websites that are accessible for 
> both the developer and for site visitors. If you know how the site was 
> created you know how to maintain it using assistive technology.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: NFBCS [mailto:nfbcs-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Greg 
> Kearney
via
> NFBCS
> Sent: Saturday, August 17, 2019 10:42 AM
> To: NFB in Computer Science Mailing List
> Cc: Greg Kearney
> Subject: Re: [NFBCS] Low-cost Accessible Website
>
> CSS, short for Cascading Style Sheets, is a method of controlling the 
> visual appearance of a web page while leaving the structure of the 
> page
untouched.
>
> For example with CSS you can control the size, font, colour, alignment 
> and so on of an H1 heading tag without having to call any HTML to the 
> tag itself.
>
> From an accessibility point of view this is good as screen readers 
> want to interact with the page structure and not visual appearance. 
> For page maintenance it is handy because you can make changes page or 
> even site
wide
> by only changing the CSS in one place and then those changes will
propagate
> across the site with no further editing.
>
> CSS can be included in any HTML tag using the style attribute, it can 
> be placed at the head of the HTML file in a style tag or it can be 
> included into a HTML file from a separate CSS document. It is possible 
> to have different CSS stylesheets for different situations such as for 
> computer, mobile devices, when a page is printed and even in theory 
> for users of assistive technology.
>
> You should use CSS to control the visual layout of the page.
>
> Greg Kearney
>
>> On Aug 17, 2019, at 12:23 AM, Leslie Fairall via NFBCS 
>> <nfbcs at nfbnet.org>
> wrote:
>>
>> Can you explain what CSS is?
>
>
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-- 

Timothy Breitenfeldt

Phone: 509-388-7262

Skype: timothyjb310 at outlook.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/timothybreitenfeldt/

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