Changing Directions">Changing Directions
After sending out 114 resumes, and receiving only 4 responses, I had to work on a Plan B. The first step was to throw myself into a intense learning phase for Drupal (an Open Source Content Management System for Web design). I chose Drupal over Joomla!, because the Drupal team takes Web accessibility seriously. I already know CSS, XHTML, CSS, MySQL, and WCAG, so the learning curve was strictly for Drupal.
A year ago, I registered the domain name TellMeAboutLinux.com, but never used it. The intent was to use Moodle to create a Linux learning site, but I never had time to learn Moodle. Take learning Drupal, Web Accessibility, and teaching Linux, and you have a Web site developed in Drupal to teach Linux to the visually impaired. All this actually fulfills a project that was first envisioned thirty years ago. Unless I find sponsors, this is not going to be a money making site. It is a work in progress.
Last weekend, I talked to Monica about creating another Web site to promote low cost development of Web sites using Drupal. Of course, ever site developed would meet Web accessibility guidelines. Monica suggested that I use pagevisions.com, instead of registering a new domain name. I copied her work to my machine, and then installed Drupal. It took two days to recreate her original layout in Drupal. Then came the expansion and modification.
After five days of work, I have now completed phase 2. The first addition was to add font scaling icons. A viewer can now incrementally increase the font size to 200% of the original value, and the site layout still hangs together. As part of this phase, I had Monica select a bunch of themes that she like, as she has a much better eye for this than I. From her selections, I found a theme that met my technical and Web accessibility criteria. The theme chosen has 21 pre-defined color schemes. A perfect theme for this phase.
In TellMeAboutLinux.com, I used a Drupal module to force a color change to the page. While it works, I felt that it took away any variations in color. With PageVisions.com, I am trying a new approach. Viewers can select a color scheme they like, and a browser cookie will remember that scheme. Twenty-one sub-themes are a management nightmare. To reduce the number and better understand I created a color survey, that involves taking a color vision test and then selecting three favorite themes. My goal is to use the data collected to correlate color schemes with the results of the color vision test. I chose this particular test because it recognizes the difference between color blindness, and color weakness. I prefer to use the term color vision impairment, as it covers those who of us who may have a color weakness, which makes some color combinations difficult to see. The test is also much more comprehensive than Ishihara’s color test.
There is still more work to be done. I feel that the theme still needs navigation improvements for screen readers. With only a few minor additions, the theme should be screen reader friendly, which will make it much easier for the blind to access the site. Since the site does not currently have video or sound components, I do not have to worry about transcripts for those with auditory impairments.
Hopefully, this work will lead to a greater awareness of creating Web sites that are accessible to those who have visual and auditory impairments. Moreover, it will lead to a work that will pay the hospital bills from my leg injury.
