“Low contrast can be good for dyslexia”
Posted by Steffen Böddeker
Browsing around the Museums and the Web 2010 Best of the Web nominees can be a little tedious at times (good luck judges). Fortunately the range of entries is diverse, and a few of them feature ideas that are both new and good. As I continue to make my way through, I wanted to point out a feature on the simple online publication Disability Arts Online (DAO) (strangely, a nominee in the Exhibition and Small Museum categories).
Along the top of DAO’s screen is a menu that allows visitors to change basic characteristics of the display to improve legibility: remove images, reduce or increase contrast, increase type size, remove possibly distracting “squiggly lines”. Viewers can also choose to jump directly to content or the navigation menu.
In the built environment, many countries have adopted accessibility laws that reduce physical barriers for people with impairments. While this is now largely taken for granted in museum and exhibition planning (allowing space for wheelchairs, providing text labels at a certain size, etc), there is a lot museums can do to increase their level of accessibility online. The small aids found on DAO are not technically difficult or expensive to adopt. Doing so is a choice that reflects a museum’s general attitude and how it defines (or limits) its audience.
Below are a few views of the different settings applied to the same page shown in default mode above.
High Contrast View:
Low Contrast View:
Large Type View:
No Lines View:
No Images View (and skipping to content):
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