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Forums are unfriendly to visually impaired people!
Kesthely
Member
I want to address something that makes really hard to use the forums. I am a visually impaired person, in the terms that i can not distinguish certain colors very well. The light grey on white text field is unreadable for me. And i have to highlight the text to even read what I've typed. Please address this!
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If you use CTRL and mouse wheel then you can zoom in (and out) on the webpage window, making the font size larger, if that helps.
Is there an option to use text-to-speech software if you cut and paste text into that application?
In your CSS file just type:
input[type=text] {
color: black;
}
The mobile version of the website has slightly less features but is black on white. You can always switch to the desktop version for those other features temporarily with very little issue (it's a button on my mobile mozilla). This is the life I live. Typing is obviously harder on phone even with a Bluetooth keyboard sometimes available to me but I manage.
I offer this not as a 'accept this lesser option.' Only as a 'this may not have been an obvious choice to you if you never been on the mobile version of the site.' Especially since the issue with typing is solved with save draft festure (ie. Read on phone respond on com.)
The forum needs a lot of little features still and this is one of them. Hope this helps and that they hear your needs in the future.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Yhr9WpjaDzw
U.S. East
Visually impaired people already have an added difficulty to playing games. Be it color blind, color depth blind, unable to see details, or having trouble reading the font. There are quests that will be harder to read, and quest items / gathering items harder to see. Some quess will take longer, others are outright onduable. Gathering takes longer, and you miss more nodes, or other people spot them first.
I hope its just an oversight. As i said, the font color is the same as the normal text one. its quite easy for them or their outsourced web agency to change the color. if you want to remain thematic, they use different shades of gray for the Ash feel of it. This lightest one is just to hard to read, Its simple to choose a thematic darker grey thats easier to read for people. Its those tiny details that bring confidence in a game.
The developers ask for feedback on the game how to improve it. The website is an integral part of the game, because thats where all of the questions, guild recruitment, build discussions, class dicussions, downtime announcements etc are going to be posted. a small inconveniance for some, might be a hurdle to others to not pick up the game. Because if you can't direct your questions in a normal manner to the dev's or community, how can you ascertain of the game is something you want or able to play? If the forums are already difficult to navigate due to your impairment, how can you ascertain if the game itself will be playable for your impairment.
Due to this, Intrepid may as well just design the website the way they want.
For a website, this holds true 100%.
It does not hold true for the game, however, and Intrepid have said they plan to have multiple options for color blind people in game.
If you have a solution at hand, it is not worth Intrepid putting any time and effort in to altering the website away from something they already like (assuming they purposefully made the choices they made).
Again, your point holds true in game - where these solutions are not as easily available. However, on a website where all the people that suffer from all the different types of visual imparities can each arrive at their own solution that works well for them on each and every website - that is a much better solution than asking each and every website to cater to each and every visual imparity.
There are many other visual impairments, some that are color based, some that are not. Are Intrepid to cater to all of them?
How many websites that you have created would you say are friendly towards literally every type of vision imparement?
That said, with this background, you surely must be aware that there are indeed free to use tools to assist people such as yourself. Most tools that you need to pay for in fact have a free version if you are not using it for anything work related. Who said you can't be critical?
The thing with you being able to be critical of Intrepids decisions is that it means others - such as myself - are then free to be critical of your criticism. You can not claim to want to be able to criticize others, and then not accept criticism yourself. You are then free in turn to criticize that criticism of your criticism of Intrepids decision, but not in a way that suggests that criticism of your criticism is unwarranted. Criticism of ones criticism is exactly as valid and warranted as criticism in the first instance.
I want to point out again that if you were talking about something in game - where only Intrepid can fix it - I'd 100% agree with you. They should provide as many tools as they possibly can to assist ass many people as they can to play the game as well as they can.
However, since there are people that make these tools for general web use - there really is no point in Intrepid re-inventing the wheel here. Rather than making changes to suit anyone that comes along with any visual impairment (I'm sure you agree that they shouldn't only address some), they should leave it to those people to have their own solution that works for them.
I know I do.
No they do not, however there are many solutions to most visually impaired problems, with lots of tools to assit in that. However the coding of this particular form format, is hard coded, wich means that most of them don't work.
For all impairments? probably none, but i can say that all the websites we've completed have never gotten feedback of (any part of it) being unreadable
You might want to check, this is the intrepids webstie not the wiki, or other fan based forums. So yes Intrepid has 100% control over it, either by creating it themselves or outsourcing it. They get to decide. I'm pointing out what MY problem is, and how they could adress it.
As i said before, they use fixed values, wich makes tools for adjusting increadibly difficult. and with poor results at best.
I'm bringing this up not because i can't find a solution, but because it creates an unnessicary hurdle for some people to participate in the forums, which makes it more difficult to voice opinions, post stories, reply to guild / community posts or ask questions.
You seem to confuse critism with beligerent.
It seems very readable to me. High-contrast and light background can give you eye strain and headaches, so I actually prefer the base css that they're using, but that's just my opinion. I don't try to force my low-contrast dark background preference on every site I visit, although that would be the ideal solution I guess.
Most people are fairly reasonable in this regard.
Most people. Indeed it is their website.
I never said Intrepid do not have 100% control over it, I said that in game, ONLY Intrepid have control over it. With a website, individual users have control - and most exercise that control to best suit themselves.
No, it creates a situation in which these people put to use solutions that they have already worked out for themselves.
It isn't as if someone would just come to this website and suddenly realize they have a visual impairment. Someone that has an issue with this website would almost definitely have solutions for themselves that are similar to what ever it is that you have - because of course they do.
That barrier you talk about isn't on this website, and so it isn't Intrepid that need to provide the solution. That barrier is coming from that specific user, and so is on them to find a solution. This isn't belligerent.
If you can't answer the simple question "why do people with this impairment not have their own solution worked out for their specific issue?", then that is something to criticize, which is what I am doing here.
You have your solution worked out. I have mine worked out. Everyone seems to have their solution worked out.
What is the issue here?
If its 'not about the solution', which also happens to be 'solved'.... whats the issue?
You hope their not addressing an issue that is already 'solved' for visually impaired people isn't an oversight. Eh?
Sounds like their isn't anything to address since the problem wasn't there to begin with.
I'm visually impaired. I don't expect the world to cater to me, I'll make do.
Actually yes Noaani, that is one of the responsibilities of a web developer. It is why they get paid more money than just buying some prefab template from -insert youtube sponsored web builder here-. It is absolutely a professional standard of web design.
Noaani's argument is flawed in a way that distracts a reasonable person from the real problem if they are less informed. The problem with their argument is that not every tool that a person with an impairment uses can 'solve' a website that isn't standard. Which AoC's definitely is.
For an example related to AoC though not connected to the official site, the aoc wiki commonly has footnotes with PICTURES from discord. This is unfriendly to blind people who rely on a text reader. This is solved in a number of ways by a web dev or by people just also writing a text version of the picture. But there isn't really another way around the problem. You have to have some other human read it or type it for you.
I bring up this example not because it is applicable to this specific instance of the complaint in the op, but because Noaani made a more general argument against web developers of companies making an effort to make their site accessible to everyone 'because those with impairments already have solutions.' Some problems can't be solved or are extremely odious to the impaired to resolve with their solution.
In summary, you don't know op's full situation as you don't experience their impairment in the same way. Op has brought up various common tools that don't work adequately relative to their issue. And even if you knew the full extent of their situation that doesn't mean there isn't someone out there with the same problem but no programming knowledge or other tool for a nonstandard website. And since Pyreal made it clear it is ok to make appeals to emotion... Are you guys going to tell these arguments to a 14 year old fan of the game with an impairment who wants to interact with the community?
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Yhr9WpjaDzw
This is *WHY* individual solutions exist - and most of those solutions work just fine here.
Sure, some don't, but the solutions that people with actual impairments use (as opposed to people with a preference that want an easy fix for that preference) work just fine.
If there is a 14 year old with a visual impairment that comes along to these forums and has issues, my response to them would be to find a community of people online with a similar impairment and talk to them about solutions - because that 14 year old will need to come up with solutions for them self anyway.
I'm curious as to what your reply to a 14 year old with this issue would be, and how useful that reply would actually be to that 14 year old.
You can either be pragmatic, or you can demand that others be pragmatic for you. It should come ass no surprise to anyone on these forums which of the two I would tend towards.
Just playing devil's advocate here, but how many blind people do you think are going to be playing Ashes?
Returning the ball to you. How many blind parents are there that have children that want to play this game that have no visual impairment? How can they ascertain if the game is suited for their children?
Because you don't have a problem with it, doesn't mean there isn't a problem.
Actually, it is a Professional standard to do so. It is in fact possible to design such a site. You are being ignorant in multiple directions. The closest to the truth you get is that a good web developer modifies their design to suit the most common tools when designing a complete solution would be odious for them to design around it. That's the social contract and professional expectation in the web developer community. Op has said quite clearly 'this isn't the case' for the forum. Hence their request and has given explicit detail into how the website fails their standard tools.
I am not surprised this is your response. You are right I do understand you fairly well by now. Thank you for answering so honestly and directly.
This has nothing to do with pragmatism. Op complained, rightly, that the website design had a flaw that posed a hurdle to a type of impairment and that this flaw went code deep enough that the standard solutions do not work well.
Your response was effectively, whether you realize it or not, 'stop whining it isn't their fault, its yours. git gud scrub. IS doesn't have to cater to your weakness. It's just part of the game (of life.)'
I don't know what your definition of toxic is, but to me telling someone to effectively stop complaining about a difficulty with accessibility to the website when their standard tools either fail or are odious to them to implement over a long period of time meets my definition of it. I can easily imagine how you are going to respond to kids who have other problems not related to an impairment based on this response type.
I have three options. Help them find resources if I have heard of a solution/know people to refer them to, support their complaint verbally or with a like and leave it at that, or say nothing because I know I am ignorant on the topic.
Things that aren't options to me: telling them to stop complaining, telling them to git gud, telling them it is their fault, name calling, belittling them and those like them for 'not being strong like them.'
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Yhr9WpjaDzw
As with most things, people with an actual impairment have more robust solutions to these things. These more robust solutions - the solutions that the OP knows perfectly well are what people with actual impairments turn to - work just fine.
This is why the OP has had to state a number of times that they are not looking for a solution - they are not looking for a solution because many of them already exist.
As I said in the post above, the option I would take is to point out that they should learn about resources, much as your first option.
However, that situation is not what is happening in this thread, and so is not what I am doing here.
What is happening here is someone saying they found a thing that isn't an issue, but Intrepid should fix it anyway.
Well my devil friend let me introduce to you to the world of different gradations of blindness!
https://www.perkins.org/four-prevalent-different-types-of-blindness/
https://www.reddit.com/r/blindgamers/
You don't have to visit I will summarize for you, I only link in case your actually interested in learning more.
Blindness happens on a spectrum. There is very many different gradations of blindness that mean they have some visual capacity, but not fully. Legally blind is an associated but more broad category. In other words with good sound design and sensible enough ui schema they can navigate an open world game, but to do things like read text, are much harder. So if AoC caters to good sound design which benefits both abled and impaired gamers, I can absolutely see a situation where this segment of the community could encounter issues with the wiki.
Again this isn't just about a binary can or can't . This is about designs that are /obstacles/. Some obstacles can be over come but jumping hurdles constantly is tiring, frustrating, and needless when good design could easily solve the problem with a little bit of extra effort or just making different design choices at no extra costs from the beginning.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Yhr9WpjaDzw
This comes off a lot like belittling op and telling them their problem isn't real. Let me know if that wasn't your intention.
Which falls under things I consider 'telling them to git gud' and subtly implying 'it is their fault', which are things I do not consider to be valid responses to people more vulnerable than myself. It isn't comparable to offering resources. The fact that you don't understand the difference between those two things has always been evident to me, but in this case has the outcome of being ignorantly toxic. I highly suggest you learn the skill of what I considered my personal third valid option if you wish to be a better neighbor to your fellow community members. Respectfully saying nothing is cost free.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Yhr9WpjaDzw
That isn't my opinion, that is their statement. They have said many times they have no issue here.
These are not the comments of someone with a real issue.
When an issue is real, a solution is the only thing that matters.
People with impairments do not need (or generally want) strangers on the internet babying them.
To most such people, that is as humiliating and belittling as life can possibly get.
That is why I am pointing out to them that there are such resources that they may not be aware of (this is a hypothetical 14 year old, it is reasonable to assume they are unaware of these tools). However, as I am neither overly familiar with the specifics of their impairment, nor overly keen on belittling them by assuming they are incapable of helping them self, that is where I leave it.
If you want to assume that this person is unable to assist them self, while having no reason to assume this other than that they have an impairment, that shines a negative light on you more than my position shines one on me, imo.
So, they'd use the Speak Text function to hear the words, and cos they're able to navigate the open world game, they'd be able to see the picture anyway and so wouldn't need the picture dictated. There's no problem there.
You misunderstand the problem. Pictures of text aren't readable by a text to speech program. So you get the problem of text without the solution to it.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Yhr9WpjaDzw
To be clear here though, my understanding is that you are only talking about the citations in the wiki, not the actual articles proper.
Is this correct?
Offering actual solutions to a younger person may be babying them a little, but if they are complaining about a problem maybe they need to be, it is being helpful. 'Go find resources yourself' on the other hand is both unhelpful and actually closer to infantilizing them. As if they need some random jack ass telling them on the internet to 'go help themselves' like they are unable to think to look. On my side I am assuming they looked and are having trouble, so what if they didn't. On your side you are both assuming they aren't looking and assuming they are incapable of thinking they should and habe to be told. One of these responses is less toxic and community friendly.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Yhr9WpjaDzw
Is it because they have an impairment and so you think less of them for it? Because that is how it comes across.
You seem to be saying "you have an impairment that you know more about than I ever will, but since I don't have that impairment, I assume you need my assistance to do this basic google search of a word I don't even know but you do".
Honestly, that is how it comes across.