Minz. Out of the box

CSS Zen Garden, FIR and Accessibility

0//8//003

This morning my new Zen Garden Design went online. I tried to bring a print project to screen using landscape format. Just have a look.

But, there's a problem with Opera 7.1x defining a width that is actually larger than your screen. Opera doesn't offer you a horizontal scrollbar. I tried everything from min-width to overflow, but I wasn't able to solve the problem. What a pity (especially for Opera users ;)). Well, maybe the community will find a solution.

There has been a discussion about the FIR method (Fahrner Image Replacement) at mezzoblue (learn more about FIR, see the links below). The discussion quickly dived into accessibility (which isn't a fault, as far as I am concerned).

But, what becomes more and more obvious to me, a lot of those discussions (not especially the one at mezzoblue) are about users with no or low-vision. Aren't we dividing a small group once again into even smaller pieces? Of course, impairment of vision, especially in a visual oriented environment like the WWW, is an issue we as webdesigners have to address to. But why that (sometimes) harsh critique regarding the usage of images and methodes to replace text with images?

As some of you might already know, my son "suffers" from a fragile X-syndrome. This means a light impairment of intelligence and extreme difficulties in learning. He takes great advantage of image based learning materials and computer software.

I just want to express that images and the usage of "assistive" images might have a great value to people with difficulties in learning and reading.

More about the FIR-Method and some alternative workarounds can be found following the links below:
Digital Web Magazine, Seamus Leahy's Website und bei Stuart Langridge.

Comments

Anne van Kesteren:

I love it! Really nice the position:fixed you use. And fully backwards compatible (backwards :)) with IE. Good job.

Tip for your form:
label,input[submit]{
cursor:pointer;
}

Anne

Posted: 08/11/2003

Britta:

...irgendwie kommt mir das neue Zen-Design aber doch bekannt vor ;-))

Posted: 08/11/2003

Minz Meyer:

Britta:
...ja wirklich????? Wollte ja nur testen ob es sich auf den Bildschirm portieren lässt.
Es funktioniert!

Posted: 08/13/2003

Minz Meyer:

Anne:
Really :))) IEs CSS incompetence allows cheating and tricking ;)
The other side of the story, yeah!

Thanks for your form tip.
I think I am going to implement this on my forthcoming researchkitchen.de page.

Posted: 08/13/2003