Suggested readability edits to introduction

[stringyland]

Using Hemingway I've had a go at using simpler language in the introduction. Please check if the suggested content is still accurate! If so I'll make a pull request. This is part of progressing issue #111 - I'm open to recommendations for all of these.

Current content

Introduction, definition, and history of web accessibility overlays

(Summary) Overlays are a broad term for technologies aimed at improving the accessibility of a website by applying third-party source code (typically JavaScript) to make improvements to the front-end code of the website.

Website add-on products purporting to improve accessibility go back to the late 1990s with products like Readspeaker and Browsealoud. Both of which added text-to-speech capabilities to the website(s) on which they were installed.

Later, similar products came to market that added additional tools to their software that allow user-based control of things like font-sizes and changes to the web pages colors so that contrast is improved. Products like Userway, EqualWeb, AudioEye, User1st, MaxAccess, and accessiBe fall into this category. These products are sometimes also white labelled under additional names.

Suggested content

What is an accessibility overlay?

(Summary) Overlays are a broad term for technologies which aim to improve the accessibility of a website. They apply third-party source code (usually JavaScript) to make improvements to the front-end code of the site.

Website add-on products claiming to improve accessibility go back to the late 1990s with products like Readspeaker and Browsealoud. They added text-to-speech capabilities to the website(s) on which they were installed.

Then similar products came to market that added more tools to their software. These allow user-based control of things like font-sizes and colors to improve readability.

Some newer overlay products aim to fix any problems in the site's code that are preventing assistive technology from being used easily. They apply a script to the page which scans the code and automatically attempts to repair the problem.

Products like Userway, EqualWeb, AudioEye, User1st, MaxAccess, and accessiBe are known as accessibility overlays. These products are sometimes white labelled under other names.

[karlgroves]

@stringyland I apologize for letting this rot, but can you issues a PR with the changes you propose?

[stringyland]

@karlgroves hah, I meant to follow it up too! I'll send some PRs on the weekend for you to review at your leisure :)

[myasonik]

With the PR merged, can this issue be closed?