The Wii Web
Wednesday, July 16th, 2008
I finally picked up a Nintendo Wii (new and LESS than MSRP!) and got started surfing the internet through my TV. Being on a low-rez TV, it’s hard to read text unless you zoom in, and with zooming, you sometimes you have to scroll horizontally. The help with that, the browser developers (Opera) created a mode that displays pages in a single column fitting nicely on your screen with text the perfect size. It looks a bit like a page with the CSS removed, except for colors. I haven’t looked at a table-based layout with it yet.
Sites designed for accessibility (including this one) look just fine in it and are very readable. Unfortunately, many of the sites on the web still haven’t discovered how to make sites accessible. Maybe with the proliferation of more web-enabled devices like the Wii, people will realize that not everyone views the web the way they usually do. The benefit for most people is that they can view the web on non-standard devices. Another more important (my opinion) benefit is that people with disabilities will have access to the same content that everyone else takes for granted.