Diabetes Development

Based on a site inspection in late July, 2012, I express my usual opinion of the diabetes industry. The site I looked over was the main site of the American Diabetes Association, http://www.diabetes.org/
I write this without clicking on any links to more involved or in depth stories. This isn’t laziness. I am legally blind, and even triple-magnified onscreen reading is usually more difficult than it’s worth. I will fact check or seek specific information, but general browsing is just too difficult.
And that difficulty is the first observation of the ADA site. Diabetes is the leading case of blindness. Therefore a diabetes site should be in large print and as easy to navigate as possible. It should not contain multiple columns and smatterings of design elements that scatter attention. The page does not follow in an easy to follow pattern. I need a magnifying mouse; I cannot see an entire page all at once in any detail. The combination of horizontal and columned elements makes it tough for me to tell what goes together without clicking on the magnifier and examining each element separately.
I thought, to their credit, that they do not use "hover-activated" or "floating" hyperlink menus. Those are next to impossible for me to catch in the magnification. I was wrong; the pop up menus actually appear too far down for me to see with the magnifying box. The first link under the first nav-bar link is a list of links that begins with the pharmaceutical company-created condition called "pre-diabetes."
The page contains at least three different navigation bars in different locations. This does not make things easy to find.
I do have training and professional experience in electronic and print publishing including layout and design, so I am not issuing empty criticism. This blog contains more thought to deign elements geared to my "expected audience" than would be readily apparent to casual observers or home-taught developers. This is "Blindsided!" and is of natural interest to other people with visual impairments. The type is large. The white on black reduces glare. The main content is arrange vertically and appears in full on zoom-magnified screens with links and extras off to the right. This positioning decreases the chance that the readers need to scroll right to see all of the main content panel at once. Other elements do not interrupt the main flow of information. I have yet to use any pictures. These aren’t of high value to blind folk and can fluster programs that do the reading.
Some of the ADA’s site’s pictures change, which is jarring to people who can’t quite see what’s happening and if the change was a rollover effect or just something that happens. The hover menu I first hit appeared over the rotating images, which as why I first thought the ste did not use hovering menus.
The navigation bar extends past the edge of the screen on my usual 150% magnification. A more casual look would have led me to miss the link for "research." Maybe I am being presumptuous, but I think that research and other details are more important than some of the links that appear more prominently. This of course leads me to a brief analysis of content, but to keep things in blog-friendly length, that can of worms will be opened next time.