I have working a rough draft of the idea I outlined in my previous post, “Switching Between 2 Accessible Versions, 1 for People with Cognitive Disabilities“. On the Clear Helper Web site, I have enabled visitors to switch between two versions. Both meet all accessibility standards. One contains all content and the other contains only primary content. This should help people with cognitive disabilities complete core tasks, such as finding the information they need, without the distractions of extraneous content.
Pictured below is the top half of the home page. Its default style is two columns. The left one contains the primary content. The right one has the accessible, text-to-speech (TTS) player and a column of links. At the top of the page, on the right side, is a menu that includes the choices “Regular” and “Simple”. A click to one changes the page’s style respectively.
Clicking the “Simple” link changes the home page’s style to the one pictured below. The column of links is gone, the TTS player is moved to the bottom of the page, and all of the footer content (not pictured) is also removed. The primary, textual content expands across the width of the page.
In my implementation of the style switcher, I made one significant improvement over ones I have used on other Web sites. I am using server-side scripting instead of JavaScript. This means better accessibility for assistive-technology users and certainly for those who disable JavaScript.
I am open to suggestions for improvement. I will continue to experiment and report on my progress. It almost goes without saying, of course, that a “simple” style will be the default for the future Clear Helper Web site.