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No matter what point you are trying to make, your post here comes across as random, rant-y and somewhat nonsensical. I tried going through your supporting links to understand your point, but I still don't quite understand your concept of a "fontwall". I think that you mean that content is inaccessible to you because you can't apply your dyslexic fonts to content which has overridden it, but that's just my guess.

If you want people to listen and understand what you are trying to say, you might want to take a breather and start writing more constructively.

I can completely understand where you are coming from, but you really need to adjust your tone and message if you want to convince people.

Quot capita tot sensus.

How is it that you merely "think" you've got it, but in your own words immediately after admitting that, you demonstrate quite clearly that you actually did in fact understand?

If you want to make friends, that's your prerogative. You were informed, and you demonstrate that you got my point. I don't care for your etiquette or aesthetics of communication.

[Added:] I see no lack of understanding of my point here, but only disagreeing opinion on what counts as an acceptable font, which is question begging, and factual inaccuracies.

And I want you to understand that this angers me. That is part of my point: I am angry, and yes, it is a rant. It's not clear to me how that is relevant or even a criticism. I am mad about this. I want that to be understood and clear. If you immediately picked up on my "rant-y" style, then I have succeeded at doing what it is I set out to do. At the same time, phrases like "absolutely sick," I am quite sure, tipped you off, and such phrases will tip most readers off. I honestly do not feel the need to add the disclaimer: "this is a rant." Most ranters don't, who are truly ranting, rather than being critical.

If what you mean to suggest is that rants exclude or prevent the flow of information, then as demonstrated by the numerous replies here, information was not impeded and critical dialogue is sitting along side and emotional/personal issue. I personally think it asks too much of one to set aside how they personally are affected, given the nature and gravity of the situation being mentioned (i.e., the scope and unwitting lack of sensitivity to dyslexia sufferers).

I have provided my arguments and points. And I am mad. It is quite clear to me that most of you are perfectly processing both of those informative gestures.

If you want to keep interacting with people in this way, it's up to you. I'm just letting you know that it's terribly ineffective.

That depends on what your goals are. I want to surround myself with those who are willing to fervently argue their ideas, and those who do not or cannot: I have nothing to learn from them.

And it would be terribly presumptuous of you to assume that my persona given here is found in all of my social activities. If you assume this, you're not being fair (really, to yourself).

You need to understand that a handicapped person just hit a Web page, out of the hundreds, if not thousands, that are hit a day, that, in my understanding, just overrides that dyslexic person's crutch, that handicapped person's wheelchair. When that page loaded, I personally _felt like_ someone (accidentally) kicked my crutch out from under me, or criticized me because I am not able to perform as well because of a handicap. This is how accessibility issues play out[1]; people feel hurt and victimized by facts of their obscurity which they cannot control.

I am very confident that you are not fully appreciating the gravity of the issue here.

[1] http://webaim.org/blog/target-lawsuit-settled/

>I am very confident that you are not fully appreciating the gravity of the issue here. [1] http://webaim.org/blog/target-lawsuit-settled/

Being penalized 1/100 of 1% of revenue doesn't really inspire a sense of urgency or "gravity". Seems like it might be worth it for companies to wait until they get sued before taking accessibility seriously.

Something about what you're saying here intuitively seems wrong. I'm sure W3C finds issues like these important.

You're correct that your "rant-y" format does not exclude or prevent the flow of information, but what it does do is make people far less inclined to internalize or act on that information.

I assume your goal is to get people to say, "this is a problem that should be fixed, so I'm going to fix it". The tone and methods with which you're communicating in this discussion are much more likely to get people to say, "this is a problem that should be fixed, but the only people who care about it are assholes, so I see no reason to help them." You appear to be well-intentioned, and your anger is more than justified, but it's important to recognize when toning down your hostility (which, to be clear, doesn't necessarily mean masking your passion and ferver) is a necessary step towards enacting positive change.

Another possibility would be to post a blog/article which references and links all of the design practices you take offence with, and then diatribe so as not to clutter HN threads of discussion on the subject matter and not the design aspects of the site.

Submit this, then, to HN.

@lazywalker I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that I'm a dime out of a dozen who is actually at least talking about this issue.

I'm happy if it is a rocky start. But I side with Wittgenstein: "My difficulty is only an — enormous — difficulty of expression."

@salemh You may not have noticed this, but all of this is incredibly relevant and spins off of the OP. I had that intuition shortly after posting, and it was confirm'd by the other poster who merely quoted the OP as a response to me.

I dig your suggestion, but your criticism I feel lacks sufficient observation.

And honestly, I don't think this is an issue that needs to be addressed with heavy software or complicated programming gestures. So, for instance,

"One obvious quick and low-cost solution is to make a CNAME Record that renders the dyslexic font via CloudFlare; like mobile."

I just spurted that out while reviewing another forum where I have made the suggestion to render dyslexic fonts. The above suggestion would not have to impact anyone, and it is trivial to pull off. The outcome is there becomes a reserved DNS space for http://{dyslexic_contextualization}.{domain}.{ext}.

So, for example, like with mobile's http://m.domain.com: http://d.domain.com or http://dys.domain.com.

What is needed here is not more code, but agreement and strategy. But before all of that, an understanding that this is a problem, regardless of the number of people it affects. Dyslexia is a feature of nature; so pointing out that it only affects a small number says nothing about the future holds. And even further, dyslexia is a spectrum disorder, so it plausibly could be and probably is more widespread than we understand it. Most people live with it out of shame or fear the consequences of "coming out."

I'm _sure_ we're all on the same page with these points I've made, and that I really did not need to express them. Then again, the tech industry is hotly debating sexism as if women were "coming out of the closet": "I'm a programmer!"

Are you complaining about Hacker News fonts or Dave Winer's fonts? Because if your beef is with Dave Winer's fonts, you better email him or rant on his site directly. No one on Hacker News is responsible.

You went to a web page that you wanted to read, and it didn't let you override the font choice as it should have for good accessibility. You got mad.

I'd suggest a different approach. Take a deep breath, have that cigarette you need.

I'm might start out by sending a polite comment or email to Dave. "I was wanting to read your post, but your pages don't do this...."

Dave actually wrote the whole stack of software that manages his writing. Some of it is quite amazing, and some of it is probably older than you are, so it might have some issues ;-). He is actually someone who could fix valid problems. He's a good guy. So treat him that way. Be polite. You can see your current "get mad" approach isn't getting a good reception here, or probably anywhere else. If you want to change the world, you need to learn to communicate, not shout.

I'm going to post this again, because I'm simply getting fed up with well-intentioned advice that tries to pass in subtly some kind of manifest authority (ageism, expertise, moral high ground):

"One does not have to be evil to be hated. In fact, it’s often the case that one is hated precisely because one is trying to do right by one’s own convictions. It is far too easy to be liked, one merely has to be accommodating and hold no strong convictions. Then one will gravitate towards the centre and settle into the average. That cannot be your role. There are a great many bad people in the world, and if you are not offending them, you must be bad yourself. Popularity is a sure sign that you are doing something wrong." -- http://halfhalf.posterous.com/dont-work-be-hated-love-someon...

What makes you right and that ^ wrong? Given that you are trying to guide me, for some reason, I think this is an absolutely fair question. Why follow your advice and not Adrian Tan's? I'd absolutely love to understand where you are coming from since what I have quoted, and then twice, outright contradicts what you are saying.

And it actually fits well within the framework of this entire thread, even if it does not get my dyslexic-accessibility agenda further.

Further, it might be amazing software. But that is an opinion. Plone is amazing software, but I wouldn't work in it. Diazo is amazing software, I wouldn't work in it. Drupal is amazing; wouldn't work in it. Joomla, etc., etc., etc.

I know things can be fixed. My concern is right now, what are the consequences of architectural decisions like his software? -- In my mind, immediately: larger Web footprint, inaccessible to dyslexics, more costly (even if it is tiny, but that is relative total footprint).

I'm not calling you names or insulting your intelligence. I'm being critical, and expressing frustration in an intimate way. The all caps are a rare thing, but as I said: I am mad. I want you to know that. So please stop re-iterating that it is not "effective." I don't think anyone here has the background in sociology or communications to really support their arguments on that matter. Just one programmers' opinion to another.

> what I have quoted, ... outright contradicts what you are saying.

I guess I don't see the contradiction. Your beloved quote seems to be saying that you should not to be afraid of being hated by people who disagree with your convictions. I think most people on HN would agree that having accessibility on all web pages is a good thing. I'm sure that Dave is not for denying the web to dyslexics. He is not a "bad" person who's hatred you should desire. I've followed his writings for 20 some years, and he is an interesting, complex, thoughtful, good guy. In this case, programmer to programmer, you have a technical problem to solve.

I hope you read the next section of your link, about the importance of Love, as well.

Wait, since when are inline styles a poor development practice? Obviously they're a bad choice for large sites, but for a simple webpage (like a blog) that never needs to be extended and doesn't have repeating elements with lots of formatting, it seems to be a justifiable choice. For blog post content, especially.

Is "!important" in your custom stylesheet not overriding it? It's supposed to, what is the technical problem?

Also, what are fontwalls? You link to a paragraph with a typeface that is exceedingly difficult to read (is that the point?), and then the rest appears to be in hieroglyphics.

???

1. Code bloat: "font-family: Crimson Text; font-size: 20px; font-weight: 400; line-height: 135%;" appears 9 times. For the same reason in the CSS world we're trying to eliminate unnecessary and unwieldy div-itis and non-semantic classes. It's about reducing footprint: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-BX4N8egEc. If you cannot see the logical next step that each of his Web pages may be doing the exact same thing, and thus his entire site; and further he might be using a plugin or theme that perpetuates this bad practice... if you cannot see that, then fair. But those are the kinds of problems I reflect on in my studies.

2. I'm not even sure what you're getting at with your second question. I wouldn't be posting this if my "!important" worked. If anything, Stylish may not benefit from the well-noted point that !important overrides inline styles. If that's the case: fascinating new problem we've discovered here. I am overriding paragraph elements with "!important"; that is the fact of the situation. Is there a technical problem? Perhaps.

3. Fontwalls are situations like this: a dyslexic reader is incapable of reading the content in place because the typesetting makes it inaccessible. So, like with your criticism of my typesetting on my Website: the OP has used "a typeface that is exceedingly difficult to read."

OK, I'm not really sure you understand CSS and blogs. Blog posts tend to be self-contained documents where the styles have to be inline, because each post might have completely different formatting, and is often generated by a WYSIWYG tool. It's not a problem, it's just how blogs usually work.

And yeah, the !important should be working. I've never used Stylish, but something's clearly broken -- in any case, your beef should be with Stylish or your browser, not with the author/developer of the blog. If you stick to a user stylesheet in your browser it should be guaranteed to work -- after all, that's the whole point of them, so that people with visual disabilities can override default styling.

So, I don't really get what the problem is. Inline styles are an integral part of the web (and are particularly, and correctly, suited to blog posts), and user stylesheets generally allow you to override them, so you can use dyslexic fonts if you choose.

None of what is said in your post is factually correct.

Oh man. You could've at least checked the YouTube video before venturing into accusations of incompetence. I mean, what the BALLS, dude? I'm supposed to keep my cool in communities like this? What is this baseless and graceless intellectual bravado? And I'm the bad guy because I use an intimate style and diction... Eesh, what I've been responding to in this thread, with this particular user, I think it is absolutely fair to say, has just been careless hubris. After I respond with, roughly: mitigating "div-itis and non-semantic classes" he rails me with "I don't think you know what X and Y are". He might as well have added "bro." Again, [BALLS](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7C8GWIV4jzA).

You haven't even tested it, nor do you even really know what Stylish is, it seems, and you're arguing with conviction.

What am I doing here?

Good question.

Clannish, exclusive, cliquish, myopic.

Thanks for the advice. I'll keep my distance then.

I mean no offense, but you're effectively writing a post about how people are neglecting 5-10% of the population who are dyslexics in a font that is utterly unreadable to the other 90-95%. I'm not exactly sure whether that will have the wanted effect.

It's not clear to me what you are trying to say. Accessibility issues have to logically start somewhere.

Do you understand what the wanted effect is? Because I'm pretty sure the gist of this entire discussion is: Don't use inline styles, which any front-end developer worth their salt would already agree to[1], outside of the accessibility debate. But what is more, accessibility might be one of many reasons why a front-end developer would raise the point about inline style at all.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-BX4N8egEc

What I'm trying to say is that you can't make a point about accessibility by making the point (not fully but quite) inaccessible to most people. I agree that this is an issue, but you're not pointing it out in the best way possible. In fact, you're doing exactly what you're trying to get rid of.

What is needed is something like Dyslite[1] but free (and probably better). A browser plugin that overrides font-settings to use dyslexia-optimized fonts. Ranting about inline-styles doesn't help anyone. Clearly, one should be able to override even inline-styles for accessibility rather than forbidding web designers their use, even though I agree it's not exactly a good practice anyway.

Then again, I like to say that there's always a time and place for everything. Damnit even goto's have some valid use cases.

[1] http://dyslite.com

Dyslite is a software product. This is an impromptu conversation on a message board.

If that's what you mean by your concluding comments. Yes, I should be working on software for these issues, and I am; -- but in my morning reading time, my crutch was kicked out from under me. If you want to say that you disagree with my style, that's fine. I disagree with yours. Most people, most of the time, disagree when it comes to details, and certainly, even further, on opinions of style. I'm not going to lose sleep over people disagreeing with my diction. If I did that, then I'd never get any sleep. (That is, I have not, and I will not change my style. I'm being myself, and using my own voice.)

And it still isn't even clear why this is the case, that my Stylish "!important" overrides are not overriding the inline styles of that Web page. I've provided a link to my post which contains my Stylish snippet. You can see it for yourself, that this should not be happening, given the rules of CSS Specificity.

It sounds like you should complain to the developers of Stylish or your browser.

You could also try writing a user script that deletes all font-related styles from all elements.

Does running that post through the Readable or Readability bookmarklets leave the inline styles intact?

WAT? Inline styles are always a poor development practice (one that I'm kinda guilty of... dang it).

You are supposed to separate the design from the structure from any logic.

  > Wait, since when are inline styles a poor development
  > practice?

Since always. Well, to be more precise, since <font> had fallen out of style, and separating your content and styling became a best practice.

I'd be interested to read how your own views of people contrast with the ideas in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influen...

This changes everything on that scripting.com page to Comic Sans for me:

  * { font-family: "Comic Sans MS" !important; }

I'm using Stylish 1.0 on Chrome 23.0.blahblah and 1.3.something in Firefox 18. (Amusingly, that line causes the MENUS in Firefox to be rendered in Comic Sans!)

Are you sure that your CSS override is correctly worded? Are you using a different version of Stylish?

Don't want to change everything. And my intuition about selectors tells me that catch-all selectors are bad.

My selector works on just about every other site. I assume most of them do not have inline styles on every paragraph.

Okay... You're overriding font-family, not font-size or any other parameters. This means that you'll override the font shape, and no other parameters. If you really need to have a particular font to help you function despite your condition, then you really gotta ensure that you have it.

What limited knowledge I have of CSS selector precedence tells me that a top-level override is the only way to ensure that the fonts that you require to be able to read the internet without raging are applied.

Have you considered using Readability? It wouldn't be difficult to get it to use your preferred font.

Why are you suggesting software you don't even know the feature set of? Your second statement is factually incorrect.

Yes, I use Readability. What does "preferred font" mean to you? The aforementioned software allows for a fixed set of fonts that correspond to color themes.

You've got Stylish, right? Add a new rule for readability.com:

    * { font-family: "Eulexia"; }

And you can add extra rules to change colors, etc., if you want.

I genuinely believe this is off-topic; or better yet, it is a "rabbit hole," if you will. I prefer the idea of using Stylish on the Website itself. (And so bear in mind that we're already talking about a 2-degree override. Not to mention becoming dependent on Readability.)

But thank you for the advice.

I see. Well, best of luck in your endeavors.

"This is when depression sets in. All of a sudden you see that you are not all-powerful, you can't handle everything the world throws at you."

Yeah, I realized the coincidence after his Web page loaded and I was immediately given a headache by yet another serif font.

It kind of does feel like the world is throwing "everything" at you when all the books are rendered in fonts that give you headaches. All the Websites too. And the Newspapers.

That personal point aside. Inline styles are well known bad practice. It's a shock to me that this is being argued on Hacker News.

Just disable page font styles completely. I had white tahoma on dark background since 1999.

Your custom stylesheet doesn't have a rule for span elements.

Right here.

Give. I bow out.

With classes like "divOutlineItem" and inline CSS padding, not one of you bothers to note that. It's like I'm wasting by bloody time learning best practices only to bring them back to developers who just do not seem to care. And I'm supposed to yield to claims of "amazing software" and age-authority.

I'm not even sure what to say anymore. You're absolutely right. I, as a Web Developer, for whatever that is worth, have no business being here in the Hacker News community.

Cheers.

"One does not have to be evil to be hated. In fact, it’s often the case that one is hated precisely because one is trying to do right by one’s own convictions. It is far too easy to be liked, one merely has to be accommodating and hold no strong convictions. Then one will gravitate towards the centre and settle into the average. That cannot be your role. There are a great many bad people in the world, and if you are not offending them, you must be bad yourself. Popularity is a sure sign that you are doing something wrong." --http://halfhalf.posterous.com/dont-work-be-hated-love-someon...

You incorrectly assume malice on the part of the blog author. Frustration makes it easy to see the world as people who are for your position and others who are against your position. In this situation it seems far more likely that the author is unaware that his site works badly with your setup.

The quote is about making your cause succeed. Here you could have won by sending an email. Instead you shouted at people on HN. Nobody learned anything about making the internet better for you. Maybe your goal is just to let people know that this makes you angry, you succeeded. Well done. But you didn't follow through with why they should care, so no change is effected.

Its good to be hated by those who hate your just cause. Maybe its less good to be hated by those who are simply ignorant of it?

I'd say you missed the point of the quote entirely.

No.

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

I am asking _why are you using inline styles?_ I'm trying to explain "stupidity," not "malice." You're interpreting assumption of malice from my tone, style, and frustration. And I am frustrated, furious even. I'm furious about typesetting. I'd happily go down being that guy. The guy who foams at the mouth and rages about typesetting; what's more, when it's about liberating dyslexic users.

Yes, go ape-shit about typesetting.

I'm citing my sources, and making my arguments. You're not reading me aright. And that's a matter of "opinion filter"; that's all I can really say about that. We don't read the same self-help books. Where I come from, Nietzsche and Mencken are the tour de force, not diplomatic tongue. My apologies if you feel that is inappropriate for Web development practices; but I honestly do not care. And moreover, I just saw Torvalds flip off Nvidia. So, what? Who do I follow? Not one of you has the right idea on personal brand.

I'm asking why. The question is why. Why? It's "why?" "Why?"

I'm calling them "poor development practices." How do you get blame out of that?

"(nonemotional deadpan) How?"