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I have poor vision. This website uses a herd-to-read font and disables pinch-to-zoom (an essential feature) on my iPad.
by joblessjunkie 12y ago
I have poor vision.
This website uses a herd-to-read font and disables pinch-to-zoom (an essential feature) on my iPad.
- leorocky 12y agoThis website is even difficult to read on a regular desktop browser (too wide, downvoted comments increasingly impossible to read causing eye strain). I recommend using your own content script with Chrome. This may not help on your iPad but on Android you can use Firefox with your own userscript. It's the only way I can tolerate it. It would probably take a competent someone a few hours to fix the readability issues of this site but they just never get around to it. Edit: Here's a link to what all comments look like for me, even if they're downvoted: http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/v5zcn9n4vg4m3cn/2014-06-12%20at%208.30%20AM%202x.png http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/v5zcn9n4vg4m3cn/2014-06-1... I also disabled scores and voting because I dislike that stuff. This is the home page: http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/sicqor50smsl4hx/2014-06-12%20at%208.35%20AM%202x.png http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/sicqor50smsl4hx/2014-06-1...
- pjc50 12y agoHN is tiny and unreadable in default Android chrome.
- dbaupp 12y agoI don't think joblessjunkie was talking about HN.
- shutupalready 12y agojoblessjunkie means the original article's site. Pinch-to-zoom works fine on HackerNews on an iPad, and the HackerNews font is nothing unusual. Regarding HN being too wide, why don't you narrow your browser window? Personally, I like the fact the traditional web design in which HN adjusts the line to screen width rather than imposing a width.
- claudius 12y agoHm, I’d be happy with some max-width:50em or so on the actual text. Now if only Firefox had a built-in way to apply custom user stylesheets to websites…
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- pmontra 12y agoIt's not built-in but the Stylish extension does that.
- krapp 12y agogreasemonkey can too, with the added benefit of being able to script the page as well.
- sp332 12y agoClaudius is being sarcastic. http://kb.mozillazine.org/index.php?title=UserContent.css http://kb.mozillazine.org/index.php?title=UserContent.css
- judk 12y agoChrome however is deprecating this feature. Stylish will be required.
- claudius 12y agoSarcastic, yes, but mostly relating to Opera 12.x’s UserCSS features; I didn’t actually know about userContent.css. Thanks for the pointer, although it seems to be impossible to only apply it to certain sites?
- sp332 12y ago@-moz-document url-prefix() or @-moz-document domain() ? https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@document https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@document http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=286866 http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=286866
- Aardwolf 12y agoJust select the text of a downvoted comment to have readable colors
- DanBC 12y agoHard to read downvoted comments is a feature not a usability bug. Down voted comments are supposed to be hard for everyone to read.
- alistairSH 12y agoI don't think a screen reader would pick up the down-voted comments as different from other comments. So, it's still broken from an accessibility standpoint.
- glitchdout 12y agoOn my desktop browser, I can only browse Hacker News with zoom at 150%.
- hluska 12y agoI completely agree. I wouldn't consider this an impairment, but my eyesight is changing (it is getting harder for me to work on a screen when I'm wearing glasses). This font is very hard to read!!
- joev_ 12y agoTo be fair, there is a large disclaimer: > I'd like to start this post with a disclaimer: I don't know much about creating accessible websites.
- fionatg 12y agoExactly, it sort of re-inforces my point that when I was designing that site I didn't really think about it. I don't have to be an accessibility expert to discuss the fact that developers don't tend to create accessible sites!
- steven2012 12y agoIt doesn't reinforce your point, it makes you look like a hypocrite.
- judk 12y agoIt is an admission of the problem and a plea for help.
- tombrossman 12y agoThat's an unfair criticism. The author (and I, and the rest of us) are not focussing our efforts logically. We can see browser stats in server logs, but measuring disabled or impaired visitors' traffic is easy to overlook - servers don't collect this data point. She's now raised the issue for a wider audience and this could only be hypocrisy if she held herself up as an example of how to do things correctly. She isn't, and says so right at the top of the article.
- daktanis 12y agoStarting a conversation on your blog about a topic you don't know much about doesn't make you a hypocrite.
- moistgorilla 12y agoDo you even know what that word means?
- martin-adams 12y agoYou'll be pleased to know that the website works absolutely fine in IE9
- wooptoo 12y agoHere you go https://www.readability.com/articles/8jmyuikb https://www.readability.com/articles/8jmyuikb The article has horrible fonts.
- coldpie 12y agoAs with most JS-heavy websites, NoScript improves its readability. In this case, there are no shitty fonts.
- jdstafford 12y agoI had a similar difficulty with reading the font. I opened the site in lynx and was surprised to discover that it was relatively well structured (easy to read/navigate).
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- hellbreakslose 12y agoposted by joblessjunkie... WHO ARE YOU KIDDING. A chick posts something on this useless site and it gets so many upvotes, oh awarness etc, am tired of all those hippies around.
- jessaustin 12y agoShe did say "we".
- sugarfactory 12y agoI use this bookmarklet (taken from Stack Exchange [0]) on webpages that disable pinch-to-zoom to re-enable it on iOS devices. Some pages crash Safari after using it and zooming for unknown reasons. javascript:document.querySelector('meta[name=viewport]').setAttribute('content','width=200,initial-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=10.0,user-scalable=1'); [0]: http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/28391/how-can-i-force-pinch-to-zoom-on-some-websites http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/28391/how-can-i-for...
- leeoniya 12y agothe irony is palpable
- justinsteele 12y agoDid you read the article? There is no irony here, she immediately points out her lack of understanding of fundamental accessibility principles. That is why she wrote about how we as an industry allow that to happen (senior engineers who know nothing about catering to disability).
- leeoniya 12y agosure there is. it's like an investigative journalist learning nothing (or failing to apply lessons learned) about good investigative journalism while writing about it. another comparison would be like a professional driver admitting he knows nothing about hand brakes, writing an essay about why he knows nothing about them, how he can learn and be more knowledgeable about them...and then proceeding to drive 1,000 miles with the hand brake engaged. i wouldn't expect her to learn or apply all of WAI-ARIA, but you'd think after doing so much research on the subject, she could change a simple font-family tag to help her case.
- daktanis 12y agoPersonal blog, slow your roll. Author said they were a professional software developer, not a professional writer.
- lilsunnybee 12y agoAnd she was more pointing out how most developers are not ever taught or required to make their projects accessible (at least by company standards if not legally)
- wfjackson 12y agoNot just that but it's abusing statistics. StatCounter attempts to measure browsing volume, not people using a particular browser. Net Applications attempts to measure people using a browser, so IE9's reported share is three times higher, around 9%. As an analogy, take the toothpaste market with only two players. Lets say 30% of people use Colgate and 70% use Crest. But for some reason the first group uses more toothpaste, so 60% of toothpaste sold in the market is Colgate and 40% is Crest. Now, which one has a higher "marketshare"? Crest or Colgate? It's funny how everyone gets so confused about this. Anyway, Net Applications is the more apt comparison here because she's attempting to compare people having a disability, not the amount of browsing done by such people.
- ntietz 12y agoI think that in this case, it's fair to compare the number of people who have a disability instead of the amount of browsing they do, because it speaks to the potential market. Suppose that there was no technology to help blind people use computers. Then blind people would have 0% of browsing, but they're not 0% of the population -- should we create technology to help them even though they do no browsing? (Yes.)
- bunderbunder 12y ago> Now, which one has a higher "marketshare"? Crest or Colgate? Trick question. I can't answer that question until I've decided whether I want to be a Crest fan or a Colgate fan. Sort of like how I can't decide whether to measure smartphone market size by units shipped or dollars spent without first deciding whether I want to promote Android or iOS.
- lilsunnybee 12y agoRegardless of if IE9 use is 3% or 9%, the point still stands. It's still an at least higher or comparable number of internet users that are ignored and marginalized by the workflows and decision-making of most internet app projects.
- zuck9 12y agoIt has been changed on popular "HN" demand.
- user24 12y agoI agree, but the tu-quoque is not really helpful here.