Section 508 Needs Magnification Standards
Originally posted August 25, 2008
Section 508 – There is a need to update the 508 standard with consideration for low vision users who uses magnification to access web pages. The 508 standard contains detail about html tags to help screen readers, but contains very little for screen magnifier users.
Assistive technology magnifiers could use some additional features as well. For this post, I will focus on the web page design requirements to help low vision users with magnification.
- Use clean design and consistency in page layout. This helps all users find information and navigate quicker.
- Maintain context by grouping related information. This will help the magnifier user to find all of the related information quickly.
- Do not use roll-over pop-ups. Some popular news sites use mouse roll-over pop-ups to display additional information. Magnifier users use the mouse to navigate the magnified text.
Rolling over these pop-ups is not an optional event. Sighted users do not use the mouse to navigate a column of text and may never triger the pop-ups. Closing the pop-ups slows down consumption of information and causes difficulty in finding the place within the text to continue reading. In many cases, these pop-ups are not even relevant to the story. In some cases they are advertisements and are nothing more than web page spam.- Provide intra-page links to help with navigation. Remember, navigating a magnified page takes longer than a non-magnified page. Links for top, bottom, key items in list or FAQ items help the magnification user get somewhere useful quickly.
- Limit horizontal navigation time. By keeping a column of text within the view of a 4x magnified area, the user will not have to move the mouse to continue reading.
Try using a screen magnifier. Both Windows Vista and Mac OS/X have them as part of the OS. There are commercial products on the market you can get a trial version of also. Magnification is a tool that low vision users become dependent upon and you can design web pages to help them be more