Category: Zone BBS Suggestions and Feedback
I know this has been brought up on here by some people, but I believe that this site needs a total remodeling. The PHP coding is about 7 years old and I'm sure that sort of coding has changed a lot over the past few years for security purposes. I think it would be prudent to go ahead and update the coding on this site because of that change. What do you all think?
Believe me, the staff is very well aware that the site needs a total revamping. We have talked about it many times. The problem is this. J and Chris are the only ones who can do that, and they both lead full lives off the site. The job would particularly fall to Chris, and I believe he works full time. It would take hours and hours of work to do a revamp of the site, and neither of them has that kind of time. Second, I strongly suspect that the Zone does not bring in enough money to compensate them for the amount of time they would have to put into a complete remodeling. So, though we're aware it needs doing, I'll be candid and say don't expect it any time soon.
... You pretty much said exactly what I was going to.
Agreed. It isn't just security, but I'd like to see the zone expanded to attract more sighted...My husband isn't interested cause it simply looks, well, "like a blind site", but...
I think people get far too hung up on asthetics, but that's me speaking as a blind person, I know. But seriously, if the only reason that someone doesn't want to join a site is cuz it looks like a "blind site," then that says something to me.
As far as the site here I personlly find that it is fine.
I can undersand that if there were to be some sort of
a security issue then to remodel to upgrade fine,
otherwise I guess I am more at the place of,
If it isn't broken why bother to fix it?
No problems here, I find this place and the people here
to be of enjoyment and of learning.
Well, I agree with the expansion of the site to the sighted. I mean, there are some sighted people on here already, but for blind people who only like to be around other blind people, I think it's important that you associate with the sighted as well. So if this site were to be revamped, I would do it in a way that would attract the sighted, but at the same time, make it accessible to the blind. And obviously, that can be done.
Yes, it can. But as I said, you're coming back to an issue of both time and money.
I wasn't saying it would be done, and I don't think it says anything that he wants to be on a site that is easy on the eyes, pleasant to view, ETC; accept that he often feels excluded by the blind community; accept for me of course. Excluded because many of the blind have the attitude that it works so what if the sighted aren't included...IE, he'd like to try some of my games, but as the blind community don't typically bother even adding basic graphics he can't.
..the thing being is that I am sighted
and I personally have not a problem at all with this site.
To me it is certainly easier on the eyes than facebook.
That place for the main is extremely boring to me.
I think it is that a person feels or can easily feel excluded
from any community where there is not something that
a person can identify with...
Like for example, attending a deaf church, if one is either not deaf
and/or doesn't know basic sign language, then yes, there are some
barriers and a person may feel excluded from that particular
community of persons if present and not deaf.
Then again perhaps why I don't feel excluded here is that I have
experienced not only blindness but also deafness as well
as at one point in time hardly being able to swallow anything,
with all beverages needing to be drank using as straw...
It was 10 years ago when I had what was first thot to be a stroke
with half my face having gone numb...
Gradually sight, hearing, able to swallow beverages
without a straw, and too, the ability to smile {and talk} returned,
though numbness is still present on my left side...
And especially flares up if I am stressed and/or overly tired.
I know at one point in time this site was changed and
what a problem it caused for my eyes as there was some
color bands with typed print on them that was at such a
contrast level that if I was on very long and reading my eyes
would hurt like anything, giving me headaches...
I do not have jaws/etc.. programs.
I was thrilled when management made the color bands into yellow
and I like to think that they listened to the imput that I put in
at that time as changes were being made.
I'm not saying it can not be used by the sighted, just that it wasn't designed in such a way to include the sighted. IE, I'm not a proponent of excessive graphics, but graphics for common things like "home" would make this site more sighted friendly as the sighted community; (from what I understand), is use to looking for visual cues and not always reading text. Also, the games...Ok, so we can play high/low with no problems, but the sighted do prefer; (or at least my husband, mom, brother, ETC) graphics not text, or even graphics with text. Does any of this make since? Also, with offline games...A lot of games designed by the blind have no graphics; (none! not a thing!), and there fore it is sighted games that we enjoy together; not blind games, and why there has to be a distinction I don't know. In my perfect world games are designed to please as many as possible; (cues for deaf/blind, graphics, ETC), but unfortunately I'm not in charge of this universe. :)
As a sighted member of this site I would concur with post 10 – The visual aesthetics of the Zone have never acted to either encourage or discourage my presence here. As for the “expansion of the site to the sighted” I’m not entirely sure how one would accomplish such ends given that there is nothing (at least that I’ve encountered) inherent in its current incarnation which would exclude me from the Zone based strictly upon visual acuity.
C.
I definitely agree with Alicia on this one.
Thanks, Vestigio. It's helpful to have the input of our sighted members.
As a random sidenote to cattleya, some of David Greenwood's games on www.gmagames.com do actually have some graphics in them. Very minimal graphics, but they are there. See if you might be able to get your husband interested in doing some of that. His games are some of the most stable I've come across, too. I'd say he's one of the absolute best developers out there of accessible games.
Totally agreed with the last post. Gma games has some of the best games for the blind as well as the sighted out there.
Firstly, I didn't know how old the coding was. I didn't join the Zone because of the way it was coded, and I've never joined the website for that reason. I don't know what difference changing code most normal people don't understand is going to make to the user experience.
That's a pretty narrow-minded way of looking at it. If you only wanna look at the user experience, newer code would probably make it easier to add new features to the site.
totally agree with wayne. what does the coding have to do with our enjoyment of the website.
as for the sited users joining, anyone can find it and sign up. not sure what the big debate is about it. if you're sighted and find the zone, you may be curious and sign up. if they don't like it, then they won't come back.
As Stevo just said, the newer coding makes it easier for features to be added to this place. So yes, newer coding would have a lot to do with this site if the zone had the money and the admins had time to do it.
Couldn't they get organizations to donate? Just a thought...
I wonder if we need to draw the distinction between sighted and visual. Everyone experiences stuff differently but here's what I mean:
I got my wife and daughter set up on a new laptop a couple years ago. Now I'd backed up all my wife's favorites onto the thumb drive and put them on the new PC. Sure there's probably a better way to do it, but it's quicker.
One minor problem: All the associated pictures went away. Now she has lists and lists of favorites. So for her, she had been using the logo which shows up next to each to quickly spot the one she wanted. Imagine if you're a heavy keyboard user and you always start typing in lists but now, while all the same stuff is there, there is dashes or something in front of the names so you can't type really quickly to get there anymore.
It's not like she couldn't use it, but it was extremely inconvenient till I just had her go to each, delete its favorite, and re-add it so Exploder would put the picture back.
We all use landmarks: when any of us is buzzing down the sidewalk, there's the familiar dipin the walkway, the sound coming off the trees, you name it. That's all visual, or at least it's all in the visual center of your brain. Basically you are getting a ton of information at the same time rather than the one-dimensional use of a speech synthesizer, or line by line via Braille.
I think that's what is meant by making a sighted-friendly UI. We have readers we can use to quickly jump to various locations on the page, a to jump between posts, table commands, headings all sorts of stuff sighted people don't have access to. So to have defined borders and some graphics would make the environment more friendly to them. The sighted people I know who can successfully use text-only sites, or even text browsers like Lynx, are usually technical and know how the site is structured. If you think about it honestly, you'd have to admit that sites you visit often you have a map of how it's laid out in your head. And frankly, we blinks are used to that far more than sighted people are. None of us starts at the top of the page and just does a SayAll or scroll with the Braille display all the way down to what we want: our readers give us this image, be it using headings or sections or whatever. I don't really buy the 'make them see what it is to be us' thinking: I just would like to think we can accomodate as many as possible.
By the way, this site isn't as challenging as many I know of for sighted users. It's not the amount of graphics, it's the general landscape of the site that makes the difference. I do think the feedback from sighted users who use this site has enlightened me. I wouldn't have guessed you would have an easy time of it.
Just my thoughts.
There is nothing inherently insecure in old code. 1024 bit encryption, which, supposedly, cannot be broken by all the computers in the world running for the lifetime of the universe, has been around for a long time (just google RSA coding).
There is nothing on this web site that requires heavy duty security or enryption, other than the user profiles and such, and I believe they may be encrypted in any case.
You can write disorganized web sites in any programming languge and change in coding may do little to nothing for the site as a whole.
PHP is widely used, by big ECommerce and banks and other companies, so there is nothing inherently wrong with it.
There are cool developments in Aria and Ajax (or Aria making Ajax accessible) but such a futuristic site would rquire the users to have super up to date screen readers and have a much more complex interaction with the site. Flash would make it a lot easier to add content to the site, but many people avoid interacting with it.
I do not see how this would add to the user experience at all at this point, may be a few years down the road when the technology is better testted and developed and integrated with screen reading solutions, but at this point I just don't get it.
CraigsList is one of the world's most successful web sites, yet it uses nothing fancy at all.
I agree that the site could use some updates. I just don't think it is, or should be, the highest priority on the list, if you know what I mean.