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How to Make Your Website Accessible to People Who Use a Screen Magnifier

Frederik πŸ‘¨β€πŸ’»βž‘οΈπŸŒ Creemers on June 07, 2017

There's a lot of content out there on how to make your website accessible. But I haven't seen much on the subject of accessibility to users of scre...
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askanison4 profile image
Aaron • Edited

Brilliant read. I love insights like this. Been recently thinking about the 3rd point quite a bit. I've been messing around with toasts and other system-like notifications that result from user interaction and they've been feeling odd UX-wise.
I think your description perfectly sums up why it's not always good to do - it's better to keep the action/reaction localised (probably wise to approach this point on a case-by-case basis though...)

In terms of the screen readers - would that be something you'd be willing to give more examples / critiques of? I'm currently building out an Angular prototype and adding accessibility options, but rather than just check things off a list, I'd like to explore what the labels are actually doing when a screen reader picks them up, and how I can make it better :)

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_bigblind profile image
Frederik πŸ‘¨β€πŸ’»βž‘οΈπŸŒ Creemers

I'm always happy to check out a website, try it out and give feedback (as long as I don't have to pay to sign up :)).

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D.A. Kahn

This is awesome. It's always so exciting to come across expertise distilled down so smartly like this. I'm bookmarking your article and integrating these points into my accessibility testing workflow.

You rock.

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Jess Lee

Thanks for the insightful read --- I hadn't once thought about a screen reader and this will definitely change my perspective. Any idea if the new 'accessibility audit' in chrome devtools accounts for screen magnifiers?

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_bigblind profile image
Frederik πŸ‘¨β€πŸ’»βž‘οΈπŸŒ Creemers

I don't think so, but I'm not sure. I've never heard of any tool that checks magnifier-related issues. It might check for colo(u)r contrast, font size, and then the usual screen-reader best practices.

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Jess Lee

Gotcha. I'll do some poking around and report back if I find anything.
Btw, you inspired me to write this post today and I mentioned your post as a resource 😊

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Devon Persing

Wonderful article! People like yourself who rely on screen magnification, text resizing, high contrast, or other vision supports are so often overlooked in discussions of design. Thanks so much for sharing your recommendations!

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Dax Castro

I think your article is great. I am always interested in how people digest digital content. I think all of your comments are valid. The trick is compliance. Most of the time compliance is geared toward screen readers (obviously except color, etc.). So things like pop ups and other overlay issues go away when you are using JAWS or NVDA. Somewhere in the middle is a balance though. I think a toggle for screen magnifiers could blanket-change the format of a page and fix a lot of your issues while still remaining AT compliant. You are definitely in a pickle and I totally get your point. Great job on posting videos! There is nothing more effective than witnessing the issues that others have from their perspective. Thanks for sharing!

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Gerardo Vidal

Nice!

Very interesting and useful thoughts, I'm working a project for persons with visual disability right now and this complements my insight.

Thanks!

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_bigblind profile image
Frederik πŸ‘¨β€πŸ’»βž‘οΈπŸŒ Creemers

Hi, and thanks for your comment.

Given that your product targets users with visual impairments, you'll probably get ample accessibility-related feedback, but if you want some more, I'll gladly give it a try.

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Manuel Matuzović

Thanks for sharing!

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Ben Halpern

Thanks for this. I personally hadn't thought through this scenario before.