A quick Part 3 Website Building-Disability access continued

This is just quick, a bit redundant from yesterday, but with some new stuff. The reason is that I spent the day in the hospital with my mother who has pneumonia. Excuse me if I do not post for a few days. Hopefully, she will only be in there a day or two but she has a lot of heart problems so everything can be scary.

Much of today’s information came from a PDF file downloadable from www.terpsys.com

Your web site building should involve a good deal of research to make it the best you can. I have spent a lot of time working on a website only to find there was a better way to do it. I have always been one to jump into a project, but the advice to lay out your web design, before jumping into it, is sound advice. Get out a tablet and draw your site out on paper, second. First, is to check out a lot of similar web sites and what they offer and what you feel works; all the while noting what does not work so that you can avoid it.

I spent most of yesterday researching the disability issue for my web site. It is estimated that twenty percent of your audience has some type of disability. Me? I’m getting cataracts and this little print is hard on my eyes. I also have arthritis in my fingers. Other disabilities include blindness, deafness, color blindness, and even just the confusion that comes with aging. And, losing twenty percent of your readers is a large loss.

Then, you have the disability that those of us on low-speed dial-up have. I do not watch any movies. I do not even stay on a page with movies, usually. Images are a similar problem, and I do not have time to wait around for them to load. Sound is just a personal thing. I like quiet. A hint though, a lot of people in their cubicles are cheating a wee bit by viewing “non-work related” web pages and if your music blares out, they are going to click that “X” and turn you off and may never come back. So, think music through before you add it. You need to have a mute, in plain sight and/or make it so they have to click the music on.

The other problem is that assistive technologies, those that convert non-text information have their own requirements. Text is converted using speech synthesizers or Braille displays. So, what do you do to make your website fully accessible?

First, what I mentioned in the last post, always use the alternative text descriptions; for everything: maps, bullets in lists, graphical buttons, spacers, links, etc. One bit of advice is to pretend you are reading the document aloud over the telephone. How would you explain the need for and use of this image on your web page?

Second, do not rely on color for understanding. Print your page out in black and white to see if all the text and images are still visible. Check for color contrast, also. There are many people who have difficulty with contrast and colors. Again, printing the page out will help you see what works and what does not. Don’t forget to show it to grandma and get her advice.

My next research is about the use of tables. I like tables but it seems to be turning out they are not always good for disability access. More on that next time.

Brains - all of them

Gaffer brought home two of Terry Pratchett's books this past summer and left them for me to read. I thought the first page of The Color of Magic was brilliant, but then I got bogged down by the made-up names.

Somehow my brain seems unable, at times, to wrap itself around foreign words. I did not study a foreign language until college, where they tried me in four different Spanish classes. The last Spanish teacherI had told me that I was speaking it perfectly. My reply was, "But, I don't know what I am saying."

I have finished The Color of Magic and am starting on The Light Fantastic, and I am now a huge Terry Pratchett fan. However, (head bent with shame/frustration/embarrassment) I have to admit that I have only, today, caught "Ankh Morpork," as in MORE-PORK. Geez, am I slow. I laughed out loud today when I finally got it. What a genius he is.

It makes me feel a century behind when I find a whole new world of books, conventions and genius. How did I go so long without discovering this? But, that does make it fun. There is always something new to discover around the corner.

Which brings me to the news I read today. At the end of 2007, Terry Pratchett announced that he has a rare form of early-onset Alzheiemer's, called posterior cortical atrophy. Posterior cortical atrophy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

He feels there is still time to "kill the Demon" Terry Pratchett: I'm slipping away a bit at a time... and all I can do is watch it happen Mail Online and, as us baby boomers age we should all be fighting the same battle. It is not a shame to have. A person has not done anything to have it.

My uncle went in for surgery and came out with severe dementia; who stole knives from restaurants and was scared to death of men with beards. My aunt developed Alzheimer's slowly. This normally sour looking old lady, became quite a happy person, who told us we could go swim in the fish tank and that she had a pet spider, who had babies, on the track her privacy curtain slid on. I missed both of them, while they were here and still do. Was I ashamed of them? Never, not once.

So, that is my soap box for today. Should you have an extra $5.00 in this crashing stock market world, remember that this possibility can strike any of us or our loved ones and Donate to the Alzheimer's Association.

Eggs or Live Birth?

I belong to several on-line groups of artists. I was once involved in a “fairy wing” discussion on a sculptor’s site. The discussion was about where fairies wings were located anatomically. It seemed to me the correct answer would be, “Anywhere you want them. It’s your fantasy.” But, then they got into how a fairy has babies: eggs or live birth and was it like a sea horse?

They could totally suspend belief to accept little flying people, in our world, but they drew the line at where the wings went and live birth or eggs. Everyone had their own idea of what was “correct” and good, logical reasons why. I began to take the whole issue a bit more seriously.
I, for one, feel that a fairie's wings need to be between the shoulder blade to balance the body weight. Maybe I’m just a klutz, but if I was hanging by a harness and it wasn’t at shoulder blade level, I would probably be upside down most of the time.

I’m not too far into Terry Pratchett’s, Color of Magic, but I want to totally believe in a world that resides on the back of a turtle. By page one hundred and twelve, I'm not sure what the laws are, but I'm pretty sure he has them. This may be the worse example I could give, but hey it's a really fun book.

Readers will suspend their belief for your world, as long as you make your rules and stick to them; or make the world so wild they just don't care anymore. These rules do not have to be complicated, just logical.

Think of all the things we need in our world and how would your magical world handle it?

EXAMPLE:

Food: In Harry Potter’s world, J. K. Rowling does now allow food made out of thin air. Her characters are, however, allowed to take food and enlarge/multiply it. That is but one of her rules.

So, start with your world, from brushing teeth in the morning to getting into bed at night, and decide the rules you need to create to make your magical world believable and stick to them.

A discussion of Eggs or Live Birth anyone?

Is it good enough to make me cry?

Actually, the answer to my title is, "It doesn't take much." But, good paintings move people’s emotions. I have always been fascinated with Picasso’s Guernica and it’s agony of war. Good books have the same effect. They move me to experience their world.

I wish I did not cry so easily. It can get darn embarrassing actually. I cry over books and movies, parades and flags, babies and old people. I can see a little old stooped guy with saggy pants and my eyes fill with tears. Of course, it usually reminds me of my dad. I had to turn the Cancer telethon off last night because I was bawling too hard to watch it. Which was perhaps not the effect they hoped for? But then again, I have lost seven relatives and several friends to cancer, so there is that too.

And, that is the thing with a good book or a good movie or a good painting; they are all something to touch memories we have. They should open up our hearts, even if it is to some past pain. We need to identify with the protagonist and live the experience, feeling their emotions and let our own emotions out.

I have heard people who comment that they cannot feel what other people experience and I am sorry for them. The one person I know who has stated this a few times is an avid reader. I think he must miss an awful lot of the essence of a book when he cannot feel the emotion. I know he is a bear to watch a movie with as he likes to point out all the “things” that are not possible. I so want to say, “For crying out loud, this is fantasy. It’s a movie. It’s not life, just shut up and get lost in it, or just pretend.”

I may not be enjoying the made up words so much in Terry Pratchett’s “The Color of Magic”, but I sure do enjoy his world. It has its laws too but they do not intrude on the wonderful story. He takes you off on an adventure, where chests have legs and run away, cameras have little painters in them and giant turtles “with geological slowness” and "hydrogen frost on his ponderous limbs” and “sea-sized eyes…crusted with reum and asteroid dust” live. Yes, I am wearing those lines out but I love them.

These are the items that move my emotions and memories. They help me visualize his world with things I can see, and even though I cannot see sea-sized eyes, I can see what they would look like.

Looking at Guernica, I can see the agony of a people being bombed out. Just as I can see the Star studded night sky dancing in VanGogh’s Starry Night. And, cry my eyes out when Dumbledore dies or when Harry is so bravely walking to his death. And, cry over the Ghost and Mrs. Muir, even though I have seen this movie more times than I can count.

I think of this each day as I do my final edit and go over each sentence. Is it good enough to make someone visualize this world? Is it good enough to make someone laugh, or cry? If not, is it necessary? If yes, reword it. If no, cut it.

Jump to page 123 and read

I was reading some older posts on writermorphosis today and she reminded me of an exercise to do. Grab the nearest book, jump to page 123, count down five sentences and post the next three. It is a neat exercise to see what others are reading and also one to take out a bite of your own book and see if those three lines stack up.

Gaffer boy, our son who is studying to be a Gaffer, has given me Terry Pratchett's The Color of Magic to read. I would prefer to start a series with book one and I generally do not care for books with a ton of made up words. I have just started it, but he is quite a visual writer and I just love this line: "Through sea-sized eyes that are crusted with rheum and astroid dust."

p. 123, "Codice of Chimeria killed the last one two hundred years ago. I don't know what we're seeing, but they aren't dragons."
"But they carried us up in the air!"

Susan Choi, "A Person of Interest" is a mystery I have not started yet, but it sits here waiting.

p. 123, "And to his surprise, rather than feeling bereft, he fairly hummed with contentment. For the first time in recent memory, perhaps for the first time since meeting Aileen, he had purpose, and peace. He had always loved a university campus in summer, the mysterious abandonment of the medieval city, with just a skeleton crew of damned souls left to meet his few needs: a single heavy-eyed stamper of books, a single sleepwalking ladler of gruel in the one cafeteria."

That last sentence means I will be starting it tomorrow. What a great visual. "skeleton crew of damned souls...single sleepwalking ladler of gruel..."

And, then there is Three Brothers in a Yellowwood Tree, by S. A. VanVleck
p. 123 of my manuscript:

"The crescent moon created a host of shadows as he watched a deer forage. White tail up in alarm, the deer ran deeper into the woods. Alex squinted to see what had frightened the animal when another creature moved into his view."

I am going to have to think on that. Is it enough of a word picture?