Member Avatar for blindbendy

i run a forum for visually impaired people using a phpbb2 based forum.

iv had nothing but nightmares with accessibiliyt.

i finally managed to remove the highly inaccessible (and possibly ilegal) evil dancing letter verification code and replaced it with the 'answer the simple question' verification tool.

the dancing letters are mega inaccessible becuase they are very dffcult to read if you have low vision and screen readers used by blind people cant read them as it is an image not actual text.

some people still have trouble registring for my forum as although i have the question and answer spambot verification option now some people using screen readers dont quite get what they need to do as some screen readers dont read with intonation or grammer.

so i have a section open to guests so people can post if they are havng troble registering. this is now constanlty being attacked by spam. the spam rejctor is catching it all whihc is great but means im getting enless emails informing me of yet another spam link detected.

theres alos alot of other access issues with the forum namely how inacccessible the admin section is for me to navigate plus the layout of the buttons on the forums is making it relly difficult for me to start emplyoing moderators as they cant find the buttons for editing.

iv been looking at arious other forum hosts but whenever i sign up to start building the forum to move mine too i get hit with another big access problem.

doe anyone know which forum hosts are most accessible especially with the option to revmoe the verification code and replace it with an accessible spambot verification tool

thanks for your help.

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Member Avatar for Ancient Dragon

>> finally managed to remove the highly inaccessible (and possibly ilegal) evil dancing letter verification code and replaced it with the 'answer the simple question' verification tool

That's a great idea :icon_idea: I'm 65 and have had cataracts removed from both eyes, and I too have difficulty reading those damed letters. I know of one site where I tried three four times without success, so I never went back to it. But for legality -- I doubt they are illegal. I can't imagine the difficulties that nearly blind people have.

Other that that statement, I can't answer your question. Hopefully there is someone else who can.

Member Avatar for blindbendy

thanks for replying. you have just shown how big this problem is in terms of accessibliyt.

as for legalilty there are some sites that are being taken to court over these verification codes as they are in breach of the disability discrimination act if they dont offer an alternative. unfortunalty the audio versions are a nightmare to hear and the option to email an admin to do it all for you takes time and puts most people off.

i kno spam is a big issue and one myself i have been eager to keep on top of but ther must be some way of tacking both spam and access. there are a number of articles onlnie about this subject and thre are alot of people wating eagerly for someone to come up with a decent alternative.

for this thread i could do with people who have forums on different sites to let me know what they are like in terms of

ease of admin tasks.
registration for members can you remove the dancing etter code
easy layout of forum and easy to find buttons.

maybes trydoing the things above covering one eye and then turning the contrast right down on your monitor and the brightness right up and set the font seize real small. this might give an ide of how i would see your forum as partially sighted and will give good indication of how easy it is to use.

a free lollipop to everyone who plays lol

Member Avatar for peter_budo

I do not know what everything is PHP capable to do, but I'm very sure you can generate random string of characters and display it as image. There you would be able to set relevant font, size and colour. I do not know about PHP and sound files processing, if PHP is able to take few files and append them or play selection of them.

PS: You have nice website.

Member Avatar for blindbendy

thanks for taking time to visit my site.

unfortunatley the access problems are more than font size etc.

im looking now at hosting my own site for a forum so need to find out about cost of domain buying, prgram for building the forum etc. the rules with the forum host i use mean i cant have sections to discuss adult topics that are affected by sight loss eg relationship intamacy issues.

a friend has her own forum that she has set up herself without using one of the free forum hosting sites and i found her forum the most accessible iv come across so am looking into doing that instead but i have no idea where to start.

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