Web Site Readability for the Visually Impaired

Lin (from the live chat room) has sent me an idea tht will turn into an upcoming video segment:

Friends are always asking me to look at their website and tell them if I like it. What about the colors, the images, how about the spelling, the grammar, the placement of everything? The one thing they seldom ask is; how easy is my site to read?

Many people who use a pc are to some degree visually impaired. They are either nearsighted, have astigmatism or any number of other vision problems that can make reading web pages difficult, annoying, or next to impossible. I often get the feeling the designers are way more interested in impressing people with their cleverness, their technical abilities and their artistic sensibilities, than making a site user friendly.

I am constantly surprised, when I go to huge websites, run by giant companies, even worldwide corporations, to find their websites are virtually unreadable, or give me such terrible eye strain, I lose interest and go elsewhere.

Often, these websites want to sell me something. How anxious do they think I will be to give them my money, if they don’t even have the courtesy and good sense to make their site easy to read and easy to navigate through? How much time am I going to spend, trying to find the link I need to click, to see product details, or to pay for something? I am usually not in the mood to be playing Where’s Waldo, when I’m shopping online!

Why do so many sites insist on using a font size that would be more appropriate for writing the great American novel on the head of a pin? I see this on very small personal websites, where they have only a small amount of text on each page, so they certainly aren’t cramped for space. I see the same on large business websites, I guess because they want to cram as much information onto each page as possible, but what good is that, if everything is so small, half the people who go there cannot easily read or navigate through the site?

When I arrive at a website, I also want to be greeted by font styles where all the letters and numbers are clear as to what they are, without me having to take time to decipher the characters. I don’t want an S that could maybe be a 5, or a 5 that could maybe be an S, or an R that
looks nothing like any R I’ve ever seen before. I like artistic and unique font styles, but not if they are puzzling and somewhat illegible.

Another problem is the combination of colors and images designers use behind the text. Often the background obliterates the text, or makes it at least somewhat difficult to read. Again, do you want it pretty and artistic, or do you want it readable? Pretty is nice, but readable is most important. In my opinion, a designer who can accomplish both is the good designer.

Another readability problem is lines of text that are too close together. Many people have trouble keeping their eyes on one line of text, if it’s too close to the line above, and/or the line below it. When I read a book, a magazine or a newspaper, I need to place a 3 x 5 card or a ruler horizontally below the line of text I am reading. There’s no easy way to do that on a webpage you are viewing on a vertical, upright monitor.

Bottom line: People of all ages have vision problems, and even though the internet is considered a young person’s medium, all those young users, who currently have 20/20 vision are aging, along with the rest of us. At some point, their vision will no longer be 20/20 either and the farther we travel into this technological age, the more visually impaired users there will be.

I have a brother who is six years younger than me. He was born with 20/20 vision. He teased me mercilessly about my ‘blindness’ all of my life… until he turned 50, and had to give in and get his first pair of prescription glasses. Funny thing about that – he teases me no more. 8-)