408171 - need PERSISTANT handicapped reading mode: MULTI FUNCTION WITH USER PRESETS OPTIONS PAGE

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Firefox :: Disability Access, enhancement)

Description

[glenn n. davis]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.8.1.11) Gecko/20071127 Firefox/2.0.0.11
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.8.1.11) Gecko/20071127 Firefox/2.0.0.11

BASICALLLY I NEED A MODE TO OVERRIDE EVERYTHING TO INCREASE READABILLITY!
I find that i am spending most of my web viewing time moving or resizing the screen to read the web.  ideally i could move my thumbwheel down and let my browser offer me a (digested) view of the web ( in handicapped mode which as far as i know does not exist!).  my experience is thatwhen i increase font size with ctrl+ then the width often gets unmanageable. then i am stuck with finding the left and right scroll ( A RIGHT MOUSEBUTTON WHILE SCROLLING THE THUMBWHEEL WOULD BE A LOVELY HELP HERE IF IT WOOULD SCROLL LEFT AND RIGHT INSTEAD OF UP AND DOWN WHEN THE RIGHT MOUSE IS HELD!)
i AM CONSISTANTLY INCREASING FONT TO LARGEST THAT A PARTICULAR COLUMN WILL DO WITHOUT EXCEEDING THE AVAILABLE SCREEN! AND THEN MOVING THE SCREEN LEFT AND RIGHT TO READ. AND THEN RESIZING TO READ SOMETHING ELSE.
An everything bold option might help here. 
an auto REWRAP TEXT to refit new visible column/page size.
a column following mode.
A REPAGINATE : reformat page width to fit screen width (perhaps with a minus margins toggle)
AN IMAGE RESIZE +PERCENT WOULD BE NICE!
or perhaps  immage to full screan on mouseover or on scroll thru.
an auto refit webpage/column toggle to fit on screen.
an audio mode would be nice (ESSENTIAL FOR SOME)
Enlarge or bold on mouseover or scroll thru.(would be nice for button lists above tabs.


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.put screen at three + times your normal viewing distance and try to read what is on the screen.
2.Immagine if this were the normal condition for everyone or at least a very large number of people (which it is!)
3.
Actual Results:  
screen is very difficult to read and timeconsuming to increase each part piecemeal and resize and re-position to obtain usable results on the net!

Expected Results:  
Scrolling the computer figures out what is possible and adapts the webs formating to be easially readable in very larege fonts as selected by the user and re raps text so that the page size is managable.

Some/most/all of what i am asking would be of some help to normally sighted people!
as many of the writers of webpabes have no understanding of what your viewing conditions might be!I went to a 640X480 on a 21" screen made to gain the usability of many webpages being checked against this old standard but again swithching back and forth manually is prohibitively timeconsuming.with all of the power in my blindingly fast computer it seems that it should have modes that accomidate such needs.

Comment 1

[Jo Hermans]

There are tools that help you test a webdesign against different window sizes.
For instance <http://www.anybrowser.com/ScreenSizeTest.html>.

Note that in Firefox 3.0, images will be resized too. But that still won't do
any word-wrap ; it's basically a zooming function.

Comment 2

[Marco Zehe (:MarcoZ)]

Aaron, could the Full Zoom featture of Firefox 3 help Glenn?

Comment 3

[glenn n. davis]

Anything might help!
I wrote this bug with an average visually impared user user in mind.
Of course there is really no such thing.  I had a ham friend ANDY who would blow the letters up to 3x3 inches on a 25 inch monitor. He is now passed away but he is the most extream real life example i know where this might help a great deal.         He was very visualy impared but did not let that stop him!!!!!
my own situation more closely replicates the replication conditions in the bug above. (if my math is right)  i like to enlarge things by aprox 300% for clear reading. 

So what I see needed is AN INTUITIVE TOOLSET that gives the user the FLEXIBILITY to be able to set the machine in a way that gives a usable world and KEEPS IT THAT WAY for all future useor perhaps allows the user to TOGGLE between several conditions. so that a visually impaired user can use this enough to write bug reports and solve them too! 

An optional preferentially Downloadable REFERENCE MANUAL in the TOOLS OR HELP MENU MIGHT HELP DEVELOPERS AND WANNABE POWER USERS ALIKE but CLEARLY SEEING the SETUPS & menus is the first step. So ASKING ARE YOU VISUALLY IMPARED IN THE FF & TBIRD SETUP  in letters largenough to annoy the normally sighted AS THE FIRST QUESTION would help because the next question could be is this large enough? LOOP until usable size for communication is reached!!!!!!

So thiings like user limits on max column width in wrappable environments is what i am hoping for.
And access to these features without having to become a guru.

So in answer to your question: YES!!!! (MAYBE, I am hopeful!) How do i get FIREFOX #3?  Will it crash?  or is it stable?

And finally THANKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
glenn n davis

Comment 4

[glenn n. davis]

(In reply to comment #1)
> There are tools that help you test a webdesign against different window sizes.
> For instance <http://www.anybrowser.com/ScreenSizeTest.html>.
> 
> Note that in Firefox 3.0, images will be resized too. But that still won't do
> any word-wrap ; it's basically a zooming function.
> 
thanks I have looked at and bookmarked the resource tab for future reference 
anybrowser.com looks like a fine way to check a pages compatability against ie and ff IF netscape counts;-)

Comment 5

[Aaron Leventhal]

Glenn, please try the new full zoom capability in Firefox 3 beta 1 here:
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/3.0b1/releasenotes/

The keyboard shortcuts are the same. I believe this has been fixed and is WORKSFORME.

Comment 6

[doug brown]

The problem of handicap support is a broader in scope than zooming. 

First off, I would like to compliment the current and past developers for the support of assistive technology. Glenn, you might want to take a look at the work being done by the accessibility folk: http://www.accessfirefox.org/, http://www.mozilla.org/access/features, and http://www.accessfirefox.org/Accessibar.php.

I have found the unlimited zoom capability and the automatic re-layout to be of great utility. The readability of different fonts can be highly variable and, like Glenn, I am constantly changing the display size to compensate. Since I have a mouse pad, I bind the alt+mouse wheel to text zoom. This allows easy font size changes without requiring that hands be moved from the keyboard.

Unfortunately, there are many more issues than text size: Fonts vary greatly in readability; Contrast between background and foreground colors has a strong effect; Line spacing that changes with or without font size; images that contain text need variable zooming; absolute positioning of elements, icons contain detail too small to see, and so on.

The Accessibar promises to address many of these issues. Perhaps it is time to consider making it a more official part of Mozilla?

For myself, I have had to switch over to using white text on a black background. Here are the problems that I have encountered. Some may be bugs and other feature enhancements. 

Problem #1: when changing text size, the displayed context is not re-centered at the previous location. Even when I ensure that the point (?carat?) is established, coordinates for the displayed portion seem to be based on a computation of a relative offset rather than an absolute text location. This results in a need to reposition the screen after each zoom operation.

Problem #2: 
There are a great many preferences and CSS attributes that can be set to adjust any given page for increased visibility. Unfortunately, since web pages are often designed for a specific appearance, a single global assitive style setting may not be appropriate for any given page. Adjusting the settings requires a multitude of key strokes and mouse-clicks. Having a key binding that switches between two or more predefined style settings would be very, very useful.

Problem #3: 
Setting preferences->Appearance->Colors->use_my_chosen_colors is very handy, but  it can be too much in that it seems to eliminate all background colors/images for all of the page elements. The elimination of background color causes problems the webpage developer used the background image to visually set off elements like drop down menus. Moreover, the elements seem to be transparent in that the element's background is not drawn at all. As an example, check use_my_chosen_colors, goto http://www.google.com/, and select the 'more' drop-down menu. It is very hard to read.

Problem #4: 
The table editor widgets for add/delete row/column are not visible when preferences->Appearance->Colors->use_my_chosen_colors... is selected.

Problem #5: 
While setting ....\chrome\userContent.css is very handy and allows a very high degree of control, it is a bit of a crow-bar approach in that 1) it requires a restart for changes to take effect and 2) CSS language is not for the average user or feint-of-heart. Adding a new preferences window or tool bar that changes the global settings would be of great utility.


Problem #6: 
When preferences->Fonts->Allow_documents_to_use_other_fonts is set, the editor no longer allows changing between monospaced, proportional, etc. If the page specifies a fixed width font, then it displays properly, but it can not be changed, for example, by ctrl+T.

Problem #7: 
Web page designers often use image links as control buttons. Many times the image, presuming a white background, is drawn using a dark color. The button becomes unperceptible on a black background. Having visible outline could help in locating the button. Better yet, having an option to complement the image could solve the problem.

Problem #8: 
Rapidly running out of screen space. Large text in the various tool bars quickly uses up screen space. It would be nice to combine one or more of the tool bars into a single line - perhaps with a horizontal scroll capability and a ability to specify the order of specific elements in the tool bar(s).

Problem #9:
Images containing text may need a different zoom factor that the surrounding text. An ability to mouse-over an image and change the image's scale factor would help to address the problem.

Problem #10:
Tools->Web_Development->Error_console, when clicking on a reported error, the entry is highlighted with a color other than the systems 'select color'. This creates readability problems for white text.

Problem #11:
Quite a few web pages specify a page width for the screen presentation and or use absolute coordinates for elements in the page. This can often result in an unreadable layout when text is zoomed to large sizes. I have no idea how this can be addressed - aside from slapping the web developers...

Problem #12: 
Some fonts scale up nicely. Others seem to use a bold representation for larger sizes. This changes the readability of the font. This could be an issue of the rendering engine or the font. True type fonts should scale linearly and not undergo sudden changes in character width.

Comment 7

[doug brown]

ACCESSIBAR
  Unfortunately Accessibar is NOT supported on Seamonkey. I can attest that it does not appear to work on Seamonkey. 

  I contacted the development team and the response was: "Accessibar is currently supported on Firefox (and Flock) releases alone. It was originally developed for Seamonkey (year ago) however with Mozilla taking the Firefox direction in 2004 breaking changes were introduced that would have required maintaining two separate builds." 

  There may be a willingness to support a build for Seamonkey if a knowledgeable Seamonkey developer could help them out. I know that developers are in short supply and are already overloaded. My understanding was that the Seamonkey project had retrofitted many of the newer interfaces. Perhaps a little bit of help could go a long ways.

  Nonetheless, accessibility becomes an ever more important issue as users age. When I was younger, I never had to pay attention to those types of issues. Now that I am older (but not so old - still 20 years from retirement), the accessibility support is useful in compensating for normal degradation of vision.

Comment 8

[MarjaE]

I suggest using the "No Small Text" extension, until there's a general solution. And possibly changing the display fonts to something more readable such as OpenDyslexic under preferences>content.

Comment 10

[Firefox Bug Husbandry Bot]

Reverting spam.