NY Times on how the pandemic has led to improved access for people with disabilities

[kestrell]

So, funny story:
I haven't been able to read this article
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/24/style/disability-accessibility-coronavirus.html

Another person with a disability (but who is sighted) sent an email with the NY Times link in it but, all I can access when I get to the NY Times website is the option to subscribe--maybe it's an overlay?--but I can't find a way to dismiss it or find a link to login with my username and password.

The email also included a link to a pdf download on Apple iCloud, which I did but, when I click on the file in my directory, absolutely nothing happens: the file doesn't open, acrobat doesn't open, Jaws doesn't say anything.

Some days I wonder why I even f***ing bother.

Comments

[kestrell]

Maybe their reporting has improved, and they are featuring more articles about pwd, but I'm very frustrated by the fact that accessibility to their articles for me at least, as a screen reader user, seems to not be be a concern to them at all. I only look at NY Times once a month or so, sometimes not for months so no, I am not going to subscribe, and I can't find a way past the subscribe overlay. There is a useful suggestion for dealing with this here in the comments, but I may just try using NFB Newsline more often.

[jesse_the_k]

Good point.

I only get the subscribe block after three visits in a calendar month. I do run AdGuard, a particularly savage blocker. I'm guessing blockers don't play well with JAWS etc.

[kestrell]

I do use an ad blocker: the one I'm using has the generic name of "Ad Block," and it's the one recommended by the Carroll Center instructor I worked with earlier this summer. I didn't realize that there was a limit of visits before the overlay appeared, but I'll try the same URL later today, and see if that changes things, since it's the first of the month.

For today, I just installed NVDA, the free screen reader, and I'm trying to figure that out.

Earlier this morning I wrote a new webpage for my web design class, and I cleaned out the fridge, so I'm just about out of the day's quota of spoons.

[jesse_the_k]

Holy shit, that's an entire silver service!

[kestrell]

I did try the NY Times article again and could access it, so thanks for mentioning the three articles per calendar month thing.

I also brushed up on using Firefox, because it's only really coming home to me during this web design course how different the same html code is rendered on different browsers. I like adding blank lines in between paragraphs, and yet the blank lines are rendered in one browser but not the other.

I also signed up for an online poetry workshop given through the Boston Public Library, because I've been trying to find resources about writing poetry.

Major ironies ahead!

[jesse_the_k]

Since I use large print no web site "looks good," at least to the exacting standards of when I was a typesetter and book designer. So I let go of presentation niceties and focus on content. (Except when I can't, because once a font lover always a font lover. Yes, the first thing I do when I get an ePub is strip out the styles so it suits my really-way-too-picky taste.)

Separate your paragraphs with <p> and let the style sheet take care of the extra space, is what I recommend. That's one of the benefits of Firefox -- there are so many nifty extensions, including one that lets me toggle between my browser default values and the site's own CSS. This has the added benefit of turning off web fonts, most of which are frankly hideous as well as too narrow and thin.

The drawback is it's a resource hog on the Mac -- the fans sound like they're ready for vertical liftoff.

Re: Major ironies ahead!

[kestrell]

*lol*
1. Alexx is a second-generation formatting snob: we have to negotiate what level of editing he is allowed to do before I allow him to proofread anything I write, and his dad and I just had to agree to disagree about fonts and typefaces, since he went for presentation and I went for accessibility.

2. Okay, okay, the web design instructor said all those whtie space issues would get solved when we got to CSS, but I'm twitchy just looking at the code in my text editor, and no one else is even seeing it yet.

3. We do indeed share a brain: I typically convert my ebooks to plaintext so all the visual formatting gets stripped out, but that's because the fancier characters, such as m hypens and right and left quotatioin marks, get converted to strings of junk characters in my accessible ebook readers.

Btw, why am I still online? Spending all day reading documentation makes me hyper. I need to go read a nice soothing horror book now.

'Night!