How accessible is Ning?

[Mallory Burton]

Is anybody using Ning strictly from the keyboard or with a screen reader such as JAWS? I am interested in knowing how accessible the Ning format might be for student use. Thanks!

[Leigh Newton]

I've just discovered your question. I haven't been getting updates from assistive technology.

I was interested in using Ning for primary school students but Ning can't support the ad free environment as they have promised not to collect info on young children. That was disappointing for me as Ning is the most intuitive discussion site that I know of. I understand that it is used by secondary teachers.

Sorry that I can't be of further help.

Leigh
(teaching in Baku, Azerbaijan at The International School of Azerbaijan)

[Ricky Buchanan]

I'm not a keyboard-only or screen reader user, but for low vision users Ning sucks! The pages are visually cluttered with lots of columns and it's difficult to find new information. If I increase the browser's font size so I can read the text the layout gets more nonsensical with every step. A total thumbs down.

[Leigh Newton]

I see what you mean. I just increased the font on this page, which has one column on the right and the text did not function as html. The page simply expanded and went off the screen. That's disappointing!

[Ricky Buchanan]

To be honest, it's not all that surprising - a lot of websites fail badly when you increase the font size. But most allow a skin that makes it better.

For example Wikipedia page for Alaska looks like this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska
It doesn't work fantastically when you enlarge the text, but if you set your skin to "myskin" (essentially, null) like this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska?useskin=myskin
then it's much more friendly to low vision and font enlargement.

LiveJournal has a similar scheme using "?format=light" on the end of page addresses that converts page layouts to a much simpler format. For example look at:
http://chasethestars.livejournal.com/646184.html
and then the light version:
http://chasethestars.livejournal.com/646184.html?format=light

Unfortunately, as far as I know Ning doesn't have a low-vision-friendly skin available though.

I wish more websites did this, and the string used to invoke it was more standardised!

[Brian Wojcik]

I would agree that there are some definate impovements to be made to the accessibility of the Ning architecture. I have been evaluating other social network sites (e.g., socialgo, wetpaint, etc.) and have yet to find a site that provides good accessibility. Anyone know of any?

Brian

[Leigh Newton]

At the risk of trying to teach you how to suck eggs, have you discovered this Firefox plugin? http://accessibar.mozdev.org/ I can't vouch for it but it looks promising.

[Ricky Buchanan]

I have, yes. It has some good uses but doesn't solve all problems - of course, there isn't anything that solves all problems! In general, the bookmarklets I referred to below do pretty well for me.

[KarenJanowski]

I tried using Readability ( http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/) and Tidy Read (http://www.tidyread.com/) to remove the clutter from the ning pages, but they couldn't seem to manage the whole conversation thread. I've had far greater success with other websites. Ricky, have you tried these tools?

[Ricky Buchanan]

I've tried those, Karen, but they seem to miss-recognise what's the "main content" a lot of the time. I have hacked together my own bookmarklets that remove a lot of formatting and replace it with my choice of font, font size, and foreground/background colours (I read best in white on dark green - no idea why!).

I wonder if I can paste them in here ... let me try ...
Zap mini
Zap midi
Zap major
They remove different amounts of the formatting, because usually removing the least you can get away with leaves the most information behind - for example the final one removes all table formatting, amongst other things (it leaves the data, just removes the formatting), and tables are sometimes useful for certain types of information. So I try them in order.
I really should post this on ATMac!
r
PS
OK, the bookmarklet pasting really truly failed - if anybody wants them let me know and I'll upload a text file someplace.

[Mallory Burton]

That's good feedback to have, Ricky. Thanks very much. I have also discovered in the meantime that you have to be 13 in order to use Ning.

[Ricky Buchanan]

You'll find the 13 years old rule for pretty much any commercial service - there's a USA law that prevents collection of information about anybody under 13 without (I think?) written parental consent and that's too much trouble for most services to bother.