Question for the visually impaired: what is the best way to notify about the availability of a special version of the site?

Question

accessibility

Friends!
I would like to hear the opinion, primarily from people with poor or weak eyesight .
Our team was faced with the task of creating versions of sites for the visually impaired. And, I think, not only before ours ;-)
There seems to be solutions to the problem. But they are dumb. And I want something more advanced...
If for blind people the issue of site accessibility is solved by competent layout and runs through the on-screen "reader", then for the visually impaired such a "number" will not work - they, as a rule, do not use voice acting programs. Maximum - zoom.
Accordingly, there are two questions:
1. How to notify a person that the site has a version that is optimal for his eyesight; But at the same time, such a notification should not annoy ordinary people? Ideally (which is not achievable, of course), you would like to immediately open a version of the site that is optimized "as it should be."
2. What should a "normal" site look like from the point of view of a visually impaired person? What annoys you the most about unoptimized websites?
Update 1
I recently had the idea that it would make more sense to make a proper media type in the CSS standard, which could be used to screw in adjusted styles including contrast schemes, safe colors, and large UI elements. What do you think about this?

Answer 1

As already mentioned, a separate version is not needed. However, as I have noticed, many users are not aware that their browser can zoom content. Therefore, somewhere at the top of the page, you can leave a note like "to increase the font, use ctrl + + or cmd + + ". The exact inscription can be selected depending on the browser / OS. Flowers are more difficult (see below).
In the text below, I can often interchange the concepts of zoomlevel and screen size.. This is due to the fact that the standard zoom in browsers is implemented like this: the browser draws a site for a smaller screen, but displays it on the same screen, stretching it. As a result, by making a site that works well on different screen sizes, you will automatically have a site that works well with different zoomlevels.
Actually, recommendations:
A couple more words about zoom. There is such an addon NoSquint , now discontinued, but there are successors to the idea, in particular NoSquint Plus . The bottom line is this: in addition to the standard browser zoom (the principle of which is described above), it also knows how to scale only text, which is very convenient if you need to increase the font, but at the same time I would like the rest of the site content to remain compact. Now, it would be nice if you test your site with text-only zoom as well and the site behaves as expected. In particular, so that the text always fits in blocks vertically (common problem) and horizontally (less often, but it happens), and also do not abuse rem and em, because if you use them to specify the length of everything on the site, the text-only zoom will work exactly like a normal zoom, which is undesirable. Browsers also have a minimum font size feature. Here the recommendations are the same as for Text-only zoom.
I don't think this is a good idea. At least not fully thought out. With different pathologies of vision (and healthy people can sometimes prefer any of the following), different colors are suitable for people: white on black, gray on black, light gray on dark gray, black on white, etc. If the font size is more and more - less simple, then colors are more difficult, and I can’t come up with a universal solution that could be included in the standard and that everyone would follow. Ideally, it would be possible if semantic color names and tone names could be used in CSS with an appropriate role like foregroundColor, foregroundWarningColor, backgroundSuccessColor, foregroundGreen, backgroundRed, etc., and their exact values ​​would be substituted by the browser depending on the user selected themes. But I do not know, what needs to happen for it to be accepted as a standard and used everywhere. At the moment, the most working option is to either change colors with the browser (as far as I know, only Firefox can) or use third-party add-ons. You can add a dark theme, switchable with buttons somewhere near the inscription about how to use browser zoom, you can recommend some third-party browser add-ons, although in this case a couple of other questions arise.
But, at a minimum, as already mentioned, don't use "dark gray text on a light gray background". I don't know people who would like it, but I know a lot of people who find it difficult.
I am the developer of an addon for Firefox that changes the colors of websites. Much of the above is based on the crutches I have to use to keep the site still usable after changing colors, as well as feedback from users who write about what colors they prefer and why.
And finally, thank you.

Answer 2

What annoys you the most about unoptimized websites?

Complete disregard for contrast. There was once a fashion for faded text (someone somewhere found out that they say that contrasting text is poorly perceived), and since then I see sites with light gray text more and more often (which generally falls into white on a bad monitor).
Visually impaired people need large contrasting elements (text, buttons, pictures). Perhaps the problem will be solved by screwing the zoom controls (although there are already in the browser).

Answer 3

> How to notify a person that the site has a version that is optimal for his eyesight;
No way, all the visually impaired know how to scale the site in the browser.
Or they don’t know how to use a computer and they don’t give a damn about your “notifications”.
> What should a "normal" site look like from the point of view of a visually impaired person?
Should scale normally via ctrl-+\-