accessibility alert to visually impaired or migraine sensitive tumblpeeps, pass this around
folks with disabilities, no matter the kind, please pass this around! get the word out, in case there are other folks that are unaware of the addon since it could be of great help for accessibility throughout the incredibly inaccessible internet.
so in my attempts to replace the now thoroughly fucked and now money-subscription-based Readability project, the page/addon meant to alter web pages to actually make them readable, i found a neat little addon this morning for firefox that is completely free.
behold, Blank Your Monitor and Easy Reading [link is to the official Mozilla addon hub, not third party].
Blank Your Monitor can change the colors of the pages you’re viewing to anything you configure them to with the click of one button, or by hitting Ctrl-Alt-B. the options to alter these colors are located in a drop menu next to the addon button.
Easy Reading allows you to change the colors for specific portions of text, be it through highlighting them and hitting Ctrl+Alt+Z or clicking Easy Reading in the righthand menu, or hovering over them with your mouse if you have that option enabled. this one is especially important to me bc i have a hard time picking out text to follow in paragraphs, as sometimes i accidentally read words from other lines and getting sentences mixed up as a result. this feature can be helpful not just for folks with visual impairments, but also cognitive disorders and conditions such as AD/HD [i learned my habit of highlighting specific portions of text to read from someone with AD/HD and it’s been a godsend]
note, tho, that the project’s last update was from november 2011. so it may not work for everyone, depending on their installed version of firefox, and i do not know if they are still actively updating it. but if it does work for you, dear god is it amazing. technically the options available through this addon are available in firefox itself, but it makes the configuration and ability to switch between the settings significantly easier since all you have to do to switch is hit the button or use the hotkeys.
here are some similar tools for chrome users!
Note: the chrome link isn’t working for me at the moment.
