Good morning #CoSo!
I think we might have a new team challenge to consider this month.
Last night I saw a new arrival struggling in Portuguese with the site's layout.
As we scale, we're going to need to translate that CoSo guide (and my visual aid for layout!) to other languages.
(In the future, an embedded translator, too, but baby steps!)
This would 100% help the site achieve greater reach, but it's an investment.
Would anyone be up for thinking through this translation project together?
In the super short term, if we could set up both documents outside of PDFs (i.e., as plain text docs somewhere on the site itself), they'd both be far easier for native translator software on new users' devices to translate into most any language, just like that!
But this would also be a great time to write a version of the guide for blind and low-vision users, to increase accessibility overall.
So... maybe our project could be imagined more broadly: How do we make CoSo accessible at scale?
@MLClark interesting... Not sure what I can do to help but I've got a bit of spare time atm if it's needed
@Zailrand Wonderful! Thank you. 🤗
I think we need the following:
1) To make the CoSo guide plain text.
2) To not only update whatever needs updating in it after all this time, but also to make it blind-user friendly.
3) To give the guide a dedicated page on #CoSo, so native translation software can do the rest for new users.
4) To share an editable version of aids like mine among translators, and create a wiki-styled database of multiple versions.
How does that sound to everyone? Doable?
@MLClark @Zailrand I agree that you might sometimes need to generate a version for screen readers, but that would eliminate audio for those who prefer it over text, and it would eliminate video for those who have difficulty reading. People with limited or no vision shouldn't be denied an interactive TOC or navigational headings. We should implement ARIA and WCAG across the site and the apps.
https://torquemag.io/2019/08/aria-markup-accessibility/
@peterquirk @Zailrand I agree with the second half but I'm confused by the first. Why would making a blind-user friendly CoSo user guide eliminate audio and video?
@peterquirk @Zailrand Yes, a plain text version for ease of translation on native language software. And while we're in there, super easy to add instructional materials to the guide for those who can't rely on visual aids. No elimination required.
So these are important areas of concern for CoSo's growth re: accessibility.
Like we'd been saying, converting the user guide from PDF and embedding it on a webpage will fix part of the issue for folks from other language backgrounds trying to learn the site. (Translations of any visual aids still necessary, though.)
But if the site requires major markup and navigation-support changes to be screen reader friendly? That's a whole other issue to be dealt with separately.
@peterquirk @Zailrand I was thinking about guide modifications from the content side, not the mark-up, so I completely see how the lack of clarity emerged. However, it did let us reach deeper issues, so that's great!
@peterquirk @MLClark @Zailrand
Or XML rather which can be easily transformed to HTML, JSON, plaintext, PDF, etc. with different stylesheets. And markdown goes easily into XML. I personally don't like using markdown but this is a practical use case.