Dave Brown talks about low vision and simplicity on the web

Dave says accessibility comes down to simplicity. And I think there is elegance in simplicity. But so many times we see all the bells and whistles that pop up on a website that people think gives it an elegant beauty or makes it makes it more pleasurable to the eye. What ends up happening is it makes the website more difficult to use. And that isn't to say that simple can't be beautiful. Thanks to Tenon for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Transcript Nic Hi, I'm Nic Steenhout. And you're listening to the accessibility rules soundbite, a series of short podcasts where disabled people explain their impairments, and what barriers they encounter on the web. First, I need to thank Tenon for sponsoring the transcript for this episode. Tenon provide accessibility as a service. They offer testing, training, and tooling to help fix this ability fast. Today I'm talking with Dave Brown. Hey, Dave, how are you? Dave Hey, Nic, I'm great. Thank you for having me on the show. I really appreciate it. Nic Thank you for coming on board and being willing to submit yourself to my questions. Dave It's a pleasure. I'm usually on the other end of the microphone for these things. So I'm very happy to be a part of it. Nic Nice. Let's start with with the first question, which is what's your disability or your impairment? Dave So I'm legally blind. I was born an albino, which means that I'm light sensitive, as well as legally blind. It's hard to really put a precise measurement on it. But I have about between 9% to 10% vision so I'm nearsighted and farsighted, can't read small prints, can't read things that are far away. And typically use in non technology world accessibility tools like magnifying glasses and telescopes in my day to day. Nic All right. So you're not a screen reader user? Dave No, no, I'm someone who typically uses a lot of zoom technology. And someone who uses a lot of contrast, to make it easier for me to read the screen with my light sensitivity. Nic Right! I think that's one of the things that a lot of people out there have this impression that if you're legally blind, you automatically start using a screen reader. So it's nice to have the echo from someone who doesn't rely on that assistive technology. Dave Yeah, you're absolutely right, that certainly we've come a long way with screen readers. And a lot of that voiceover technologies become very commonplace. But I think for someone like me, who's who was born legally blind, and has always kind of adapted wanting larger fonts and zoom technology, some of that occasionally gets left out of the conversation. Nic Hmm. So that seems like a good segue. What would you say your biggest barrier on the web is? Dave For me, I it's hard to describe it precisely. But what I'll say is that when you're using a lot of built in zoom features, so for example, inside a web browser, holding down Ctrl, and scrolling your mouse to zoom in, and make fonts look bigger. So often, that ends up disrupting the way in which information and buttons are presented on the screen. So for me, as I'm trying to maybe engage in something like online shopping, as I'm zooming in to try and make text bigger to read product descriptions, reviews, even just something simple, like price, size, shipping details, as I do that kind of zooming, what ends up happening is the boxes, which may require me to put in some information, address, name, credit card, a lot of those start to lose their functionality, because the buttons are not designed to be utilized in that way with that kind of zoom, or what ends up happening is the information becomes difficult to read, because it either jumbles together or disappears. Nic Hmm. It's really nice to hear from a user. This is the kind of stuff that I tell clients, when I do audits, you know, you can't do that. Because folks, were legally blind folks with low vision that need to increase page