2020-03-31 10:54:20

hi,
suppose you want to develop a website for yourself, how you will make it look good (as we're have sight issues)?
how do you style it or make it good for someone who is not visually impaired?
or lets dive more deeper into it, suppose you want to be hired as a frontend developer or a full stack developer. how do you make a good looking website?
how do you color your website in such a way that when someone sighted look at your website will enjoy it?
or how do you make your website that someone who are color blind can read it without problem?
thanks.

2020-03-31 12:21:48

I'll reserch for cullers then i'll decide
I won't make my website dark

2020-03-31 14:38:47

I actually have a similar question. I know CSS, but I just don't know what colors look good on what.

2020-03-31 16:27:49

You can't be a frontend developer professionally.  It doesn't matter how much CSS you know. No one is going to give you a full-time sighted assistant to help check your styling to make sure it's accurate and working on all the major browsers.  You either have enough vision that you don't need to ask this question, or you don't do frontend development, and there is honestly no middle ground here.

For a personal site, use something like Nikola or Jekyll and let the default themes handle it. Or hire/find a friend, either to help you test or to just give you working CSS.

My Blog
Twitter: @ajhicks1992

2020-03-31 19:10:09

I agree with @4 so I asked this.
although bootstrap can help you with this, but you need sighted assistance (I'm saying this because I had more vision than now in passed).
@2 if you research on which color is good for what you won't make it at all. because you should see both forground and background colors and decide

2020-04-01 00:00:59

Here's a tip ty. Dark colours on light background. Light colours on dark backgrounds. If you want I can help you out with colours and what looks good and what looks bad.

You ain't done nothin' if you ain't been cancelled
_____
I'm working on a playthrough series of the space 4X game Aurora4x. Find it here

2020-04-01 00:05:15

@6 it doesn't work always.
consider that someone puts a text in orange in a black screen.
if you saw it before (people who had vision before can understand what I'm saying).
or a text in cyan in a green screen (consider that someone who is color blinded wants to read it).

2020-04-01 00:12:05

If the question is actually just how do sighted people do this...

I know a sighted frontend developer as a somewhat close friend, and work with some others.  There are guidelines you can pull from, i.e. Apple's human interface guidelines, and for accessibility there's the WCAG 2.0.  But it really just seems to turn into art for everyone, like the digital app equivalent of painting.  There's also a large degree of being blind meaning not having certain shared experiences to draw from.  And in this case even a little bit of vision doesn't help you have those experiences, because the details that people get stuck on are very fine details indeed.

It's like how sighted people i.e. freak out when I go cooking in the kitchen with the sharp knives or don't understand how I'm living alone: there's too much of a gap for there to be a good common language, and people on one side have to try very hard to even get a little bit of what it's like to be on the other side of it.  But it's not formulaic like programming and you'll be hard pressed to find some sort of table or something to draw from.

My Blog
Twitter: @ajhicks1992

2020-04-01 01:58:05 (edited by magurp244 2020-04-01 02:17:37)

Thats a bit of a misconception, since Art Theory draws from a set of well traveled techniques, same with Color Theory. The main problem is available tools and approach, which is very different from a non-visual perspective than that of a visual one, not to mention there not being an abundance of books or materials around that cover it, though you can find some [here]. Accessible digital paint tools are also still largely in their infancy, and with better tools and materials, the practical experience becomes more one of exposure. Then there's also things like [AI assisted drawing tools]. These are things i've wanted to tackle more, but i've been rather occupied of late, if it helps there's a guide on accessible color schemes [here] that may be useful.

-BrushTone v1.3.3: Accessible Paint Tool
-AudiMesh3D v1.0.0: Accessible 3D Model Viewer

2020-04-01 02:34:43

@9 I just love how you always have wwhat's needed. You're quite resourceful.

You ain't done nothin' if you ain't been cancelled
_____
I'm working on a playthrough series of the space 4X game Aurora4x. Find it here

2020-04-01 02:37:14

@9
Most painters don't go talk about color theory. Most musicians don't go talk about music theory. Most frontend developers don't go talk about frontend development theory either.  For things which are almost entirely human-centric, the theoretical resources are only going to get you halfway there but probably much less.

My Blog
Twitter: @ajhicks1992

2020-04-01 05:03:46 (edited by magurp244 2020-04-01 05:19:35)

@11
It depends. In some respects thats an argument of one learning style over another, since some benefit more from theory than others do. For many visual artists they can learn innately because visual material isn't an abstract concept, though some benefit more from theory study than others in practice. There are an enormous number of styles and ways to create art however, some more formulaic or programmatic than others, like OpenSCAD for modeling, or Povray3D for raytracing. In the end its just arranging 2D arrays of data into particular patterns by arbitrary standards. When I say "theory", I mean the application of particular techniques and methods in a structured deterministic way, much like programming. Given that visual art may be an abstract concept for non-visual users, working on such a practical, or theoretical side first can help conceptually build a foundation towards more practical experience.

When it comes to my own pixel art, I tend to work methodically and geometrically using patterns with existing art techniques, or at times with programatically generated procedural art. Same with GUI Design.

-BrushTone v1.3.3: Accessible Paint Tool
-AudiMesh3D v1.0.0: Accessible 3D Model Viewer

2020-04-01 09:09:16

@8,
I don't mean accessibility.
from a totally blind perspective and when for totally blind visitors, I have no problem of setting colors (background color black foreground color blue for example) and it doesn't make any sense for them.
but when someone sighted comes to my website, he says this website is terrible in terms of appearance.
not just the color, amount of margin, padding, fonts and their sizes etc all of them have effect on the people who see your website.
as you know, every color has meaning (in different cultures they can mean differently).
as an example coca cola's color is a white text written on a red background which is not an accidental choice.
I even don't mean the contrast between the colors (as it's a requirement for accessibility), but the thing that sighted people can see and even comment on it.
as far as i know, there isn't any tool that can help us with this matter.

2020-04-01 23:30:48

I did some front-end work at one of my previous internships. All I did was look up Bootstrap tags and get a general sense of what they do. I incorporated what I thought was asked of me, handed it off to another dev, and they either confirmed it was the necessary change or not. I'd then try again once more, and if that didn't take the dev would just do it himself.
Now, in practical terms, it's far easier to just have someone else do the visually-driven things. That doesn't mean you can't be a part of building the HTML. Far too many front-end devs think HTML is too make the website "look visually-appealing," and that is an intro to web design 101 kind of bullet point that isn't talked about or stressed enough. [DO NOT] use headings to make your text look bigger. That's what CSS is for. Remember the ML stands for "markup language." You're quite literally marking up the content of your website. In other words, the HTML just describes the content, but does not operate as the driver for making it appear in a visually-pleasing manner.
My point here is that while you won't find it easy to do front-end work in terms of visual aesthetics, you can still play a vital role in how HTML is handled, and that makes a whole world's difference when it comes to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and what that means for screen-reader users.

What game will hadi.gsf want to play next?

2020-04-01 23:55:20

all of us have no problem with html side of things, just the css part is the problem since it directly deals with appearance.

2020-04-02 01:03:20

Just to reiterate - yes, there is nothing stopping you from using CSS yourself, but there exist no tools to tell you whether or not it is "appealing," seeing as it's a subjective thing that companies have dedicated teams for. You are not going to be able to accomplish front-end work all on your own as a totally-blind person if you're shooting for aesthetics.

What game will hadi.gsf want to play next?

2020-04-03 20:56:40

in fact there are two ways of  clearing up this issue and actually combining two is my method.

1.Imitate what others do. Examine other html pages, how they do this and that ect.
2.Spesiphic colours for spesiphic content types.

as i said before, make two of these come together and  all fine.

How ever i agree noone would want to hier a totally blind person to be their a front end developer though getting hired as a web developper  might not be that muthc of an issue.

2020-04-03 21:49:56

@12
It's not really an argument about learning styles.  If it was possible to do music via music theory or painting via painting theory, we'd have had AI doing this in the 90s.  yes, it's useful.  yes, you can use it as a jumping off point. But at the end of the day it's really, really not enough.

@17
it doesn't matter. because you also have 3.  3 is there is literally no reliable tool to tell you whether your CSS is working.  There is no need for such a tool because for sighted people that tool is called functional vision.

Blind people can't do everything.  This is one of the things we can't do.  The best I ever found for working on existing codebases is dpxdt, which can be used in CI setups to prove that you didn't break CSS, but it still doesn't tell you if the CSS you wrote is doing what you think, or even doing anything at all.

If you rope a sighted friend in you can write the CSS, but note that this still requires a sighted friend.  I also went through the "but maybe somehow" bargaining phase that everyone goes through and there isn't a maybe somehow for this one.

My Blog
Twitter: @ajhicks1992

2020-04-03 21:55:11

@18
You can simply copy a working csss.

2020-04-04 00:39:48 (edited by amerikranian 2020-04-04 00:43:28)

Just because it works does not mean that it will do so in your situation. Not every code runs the same and different browsers. Not every code runs the same and different page layouts. You can’t tell that it works as it should.
Finally, people may have had different reasons to use such CSS. It may have been contrasting with something else on the page. It may have been highlighting something which you don’t even have. You just can’t tell that something is appropriate in your situation when it comes to visual components. It’s like saying to use parts of Linux code in windows because they’re both OS’.

2020-04-04 00:46:19

@19
Actually, no you cannot. You have to get all the CSS selecters right for your page as a bare minimum.

CSS isn't just setting background and foreground color.  It sets literally hundreds of properties per element using a complex query language that can let you i.e. change the color of all paragraphs inside a div with a specific attribute on it but if and only if it's the tag immediately after an h3 tag. For example.  It has behavior differences across all browsers.  The most basic CSS you can do that looks even tolerable, even if copying, requires customization and testing against Linux, Windows, Mac, and iOS, with each browser on those platforms. Just to know if it works. Not even works as in looks good. Works as in took effect and did something in the first place.

There are people who don't even know a proper programming language making near $100000 simply by building a career around knowing how to get CSS right.

My Blog
Twitter: @ajhicks1992

2020-04-04 03:04:51

@18
What precisely are we talking about here? I don't disagree that theory isn't everything, but in what respect is it not enough? Aesthetically? In the functional creation of digital art? In the development of complex CSS scripting? There are varying degrees of complexity in each endeavor that can inform different approaches and tools for the tasks, you don't necessarily need an exquisitely complex CSS page for example.

Skipping professional employment, what would you consider a workable level of CSS for a personal webpage?

-BrushTone v1.3.3: Accessible Paint Tool
-AudiMesh3D v1.0.0: Accessible 3D Model Viewer

2020-04-04 03:32:57

@22
I don't know, and I am speaking as someone who tried to get that knowledge and failed.  I let the themes of my static site generator handle it.

The most junior frontend people I've ever worked with go beyond where blind people can follow almost immediately.  Get 10 or 20 colors going, shadows, animations, you name it.  If I had to guess--without having the shared sighted experiences that let any of us guess, which is my entire point--I'd say you're looking at easily 5 to 10 different foreground colors, up to 2 background colors, at least 2 or 3 different fonts, and at least 2 or 3 different text sizes on the most basic modern blog that "looks good".

But sadly that's not actually sufficient, because HTML also isn't able to do layout by modern standards, in the sense that if someone tries to read your site on their phone and you don't put effort in they're going to have a terrible experience.  So you now also need to consider all the sizing stuff, so that your article doesn't wrap text weirdly, and test it on multiple screen sizes.  And this can't just be pixels, because devices are now too diverse for that, so you need constraints of some sort, and then that feeds cyclically back into font choices.

Sighted devs like static site generators too, or WordPress, or downloading react components from NPM and then writing special case CSS to override.  The level of complexity here is why.  There is some misunderstanding on this thread that if you're sighted you pick a couple colors and say use these colors and you're done with it or something.  That's so far from the modern reality.

My Blog
Twitter: @ajhicks1992

2020-04-04 06:00:34

1. Use WordPress or the default themes for whatever you are building. This will get things 90% there and will work to make your site not look bad.
2. Use a UI library like Vaadin that has default styling. You will need to sit next to someone with the CSS for your site open and go through each page to make sure it looks good.
3. Use something like Bootstrap CSS and then have a sighted person sit next to you and let you know what to do to make it look better.

Once you have an idea of what components people like, then you can plug and play those pieces of the UI into future sites, but you always need to have a sighted person look at the interface to see how it looks. I equate CSS to a more complex version of aria. You never want to use aria without having a screen reader user test it.

2020-04-04 07:59:25

@24, the thing with wordpress is that it's default themes are as crap as hell.
(saw it, sighted people agreed with me at least regarding twenty ten).
for someone blind we even don't need css at all (the website can be a simple html page).
but I'm talking about at least designing it that it least look good.
(simply choosing colors doesn't suffice, you need to make it look good).