This 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:
Hm, 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…
Sarcastic, 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?
Personally, I like the fact the traditional web design in which HN adjusts the line to screen width rather than imposing a width.
Its just that it ruins the experience on mobile devices because you can't resize the window and zooming doesn't reflow the text.
for what it's worth, I don't really have a problem with it. They provide an API and there are like 90 billion ycombinator mobile apps to choose from which do a better job.
The Original article seems to mis-quote browser marketshare. They have IE10 listed as 3% of the market and "Other" as 36%? And all the IE's combined for 19% market share? Everything I've seen (except the original article) list the IE's at a combined market share somewhere in the neighborhood of 50-70%., with IE8 still having a dominant 15-20%.
> Regarding HN being too wide, why don't you narrow your browser window?
Narrow my browser window because this one site makes it difficult to read? I could do that, or I could just use a content script and leave my browser at the width I prefer. I maximize my browser for distraction free reading.
Eight,I'm sure I'm going to resize my browser just to read HN and then maximize it again when I navigate away to a site which uses a sane content width. No need to be an apologist. I like the content here,but the design in many respects,is awful (expired links anyone?).
Oftentimes, narrowing HN below 1280px is still not enough as the content then scrolls sideways, so there is a very good argument for putting a width on content that doesn't adjust to the window size properly.
I just downloaded Opera for Android because of this, but no, it does not work as the old android browser did. Or do I need to adjust a setting for this somewhere?
I 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.
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.
> 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.
I 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.)
Regardless 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.
Exactly, 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!
I really liked the first font from a design standpoint and found it quite readable! It's ridiculous you're being attacked for voicing a very valid concern on your own blog, because of your preferred font choice. A lot of the comments both on your blog and on here seem to almost be mocking the idea that sites should be accessible, by making an unwarranted personal attack against you, when you clearly state you were never even introduced to accessibility programming through formal education, like lots and lots of developers weren't ( myself included ).
Forcing programmers to jump through extra hoops (trying /em to learn on their own, and making well-intentioned changes but not knowing if its right or enough or effective) is not the way to increase knowledge and uptake of accessibility-minded-design as the standard.
It would be nice if designers were still able to make stylistic choices with regards to fonts and website colors, that may be less readable for some, but have it degrade easily to something more readable with a simple command or click of a button. Besides some roundabout ways i can think of, or using readability, im not sure how to do that easily though.
That'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.
I 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.
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!!
I 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).
Did 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).
sure 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.
And 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)
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/2014-06-1...
I also disabled scores and voting because I dislike that stuff.
This is the home page:
http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/sicqor50smsl4hx/2014-06-1...