Re: Color Visibility

It seems that there HAS been research into which colors are good and bad for
visibility, such as what is described at the Lighthouse site. But this
doesn't carry over very well to the task of text displays on computer
monitors. We need to know the RGB values that make up good/bad color matches
so that we can test web pages for visibility.

I doubt that we will come up with exact values that will be absolutely good
or absolutely bad but we should be able to find color combinations that are
likely good/bad for most people.

The purpose of the color voting is so that we can get some real world data.
We could never hope to test in a lab all the different computer/video
card/monitor/contrast/brightness variables.

Chris

-----Original Message-----
From: Bruce Bailey <bbailey@clark.net>
To: WAI ER IG List <w3c-wai-er-ig@w3.org>
Date: May 20, 1999 12:53 PM
Subject: Re: Color Visibility


>I am quite skeptical of the concept of "voting" as to what colors are
>good/bad for web page visibility.
>
>It seems to me that this would only be useful for hues or combinations that
>were questionable or rendered very differently on different systems.  Even
>then, you would have to do some kind of statistical sample rather than
>volunteer voting.  This kind of hard evidence might be helpful to web
>authors who feel that the "colors looks fine on my screen -- who cares that
>you don't like it".
>
>I have a hard time believing that no general mainstream usability testing
>and/or research has been done with regard to color
>contrast/visibility/readability.  Surely "expert" opinion has got to count
>for more than how random users "vote".
>
>It probably WOULD be meaningful to get real world feedback from users who
>identified themselves as having color blindness.  I have no idea how you
>reach such a population!
>
>Just my two cents...
>
>Bruce Bailey, DORS Webmaster
>http://www.dors.state.md.us/
>410/554-9211
>
>----------
>From: Chris Ridpath <chris.ridpath@utoronto.ca>
>To: WAI ER IG List <w3c-wai-er-ig@w3.org>
>Subject: Color Visibility
>Date: Tuesday, May 18, 1999 11:56 AM
>
>We've been looking at the problem of trying to determine what colors are
>good/bad for web page visibility. As part of the process, we wanted to set
>up a web site where people could go and 'vote' on several different color
>combinations. In this way we would get some real world results. Our example
>site is at:
>http://aprompt.snow.utoronto.ca/ColorTest.html
>
>Please take a look and let me know your comments.
>
>I also have a small program the tries to determine whether colors are
>good/bad visibility for use in web pages. Let me know if you'd like to have
>a look at it.
>
>Chris
>
>

Received on Thursday, 20 May 1999 16:28:30 UTC