Posting guidelines and accessibility - OTT?

[fallen_angel]

Apart from my building of web sites and interests in accessibility (what fun hobbies I have, eh?!   ), I run an SMF forum for a neurological condition, and one of the many symptoms of this condition is visual disturbances of one kind or another, ranging from intermittent blurring, peripheral vision loss, total vision loss, and everything in between.

One of the things that drives me mad as a admin is the appalling lazy spelling of some members, "text speak", total lack of punctuation or capitalisation in the case of a couple of members, and the usual over-use of smileys and web abbreviations, OMG, ROFL, etc.

I know standards on the web are different to other forms of communication, and we're never all going to be perfect spellers, but finding some members' posts increasingly difficult to read, even after we posted some general guidelines and "netiquette" guidance, pointing out they're a lot more likely to get replies to their posts if people can easily read them, I've decided to take a firm stance and ban text speak, excessive abbreviations, multiple smileys, put a limit on forum signatures, and request that members make use of the spell checker, and use at least basic punctuation and capitalisation etc.

After a private warning some members have shown they can actually spell and use punctuation, and have mended their ways.  I really do feel that this is an accessibility issue though. I design my sites to meet accessibility standards, and though SMF isn't 100% accessible, it's not too bad as accessibility goes, but one of the biggest accessibility barriers at the moment is the members themselves.

I use a basic screen reader and magnifier at times myself, as does one of my moderators, and the total lack of punctuation in some posts in particular and huge images in signatures drive me mad. With the visual problems the condition causes it's likely a higher than normal proportion of our members and visitors to the site are likely to be using some kind of assistive technology, so I've put my foot down so to speak and insisted that posts meet some basic guidelines on using punctuation and capitalisation, splitting long posts into paragraphs, making use of the spell-check facility before submitting a post, and putting a size limit on image sizes. I've posted another "guidelines" post tonight coming from the accessibility angle, and included information about screen readers and magnifiers and how they work, and some of the problems using them, and how frustrating some of the common posting practices on forums are to people using screen readers etc.

For the past couple of weeks we've simply been warning members by PM, but a small minority continue to cause problems, and I've now instigated a policy that if after a warning a member persists in posting messages which breach the forum rules and guidelines, the offending posts will be removed from the visible area of the forum to a "dumping ground" visible only to moderators, in the hope that their posts disappearing might prompt members to get their act together.

Thoughts? OTT? Has anyone else done anything similar, and what sort of reaction did you meet?

[Coldfx]

Bleh, sadly for me, most of my forums we promote proper speak by stressing we cannot read their posts, developing a majority to stand against text speak.

Some ideas I'd recommend for you to do, is change up the language filter; how so you ask?

lol => haha.
teh = the
etc.

Just a thought `;p

[jeddi]

Ahh! too many rules. Found this in your post lol

me mad as a admin is

should be'me mad as an admin'.