Re: links on white and black background

Thanks Kynn,

You point to some interesting stuff I have not looked at before. I should
find out more about this.

You say the answer is to use style sheets - but how should it work for
browsers that can't use style sheets? Should I use the font element so that
the site looks the same on non-stylesheet browsers, or just not do anything
and  have no colored navigation bars? i.e don't set a background color in
the table that contains the navigation and just use the default link colors.

Thanks,
Pat

on 6/7/01 12:56 am, Kynn Bartlett at kynn@reef.com wrote:

> At 9:41 PM +0100 2001/7/05, Pat Byrne wrote:
>> I asked my original question so that I could find the best and most
>> accessible way of doing this. Using a navigation bar with a different
>> background to the rest of the page is a popular technique with Web designers
>> - rather that say to them 'no you can't do that' I'd rather be able to say
>> 'here the most accessible way of doing it'.
> 
> Going off on a tangent, here's a thought:
> 
> CSS2 provides color keywords tied to the user's system preferences:
> http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/ui.html#system-colors
> 
> One of the difficulties in creating navigation bars is that you want to
> be able to do exactly what Pat describes here -- using different colors
> to offset the navigation options.  But usually it's difficult to figure
> out how exactly to do that and still allow the user to set colors.
> 
> I submit that by using the system defaults, you may actually be able
> to solve that problem, by assuming (*) that the user will have set
> reasonable color preferences on her operating system to allow the use
> of the system -- and therefore you can use system colors in web
> designs relatively safely.
> 
> (*) This is a semi-safe assumption, because otherwise the user may have
> problems using the entire system if the colors are not "safe" for her
> use.
> 
> This would be a good technique for the CSS Techniques document for
> the following checkpoint:
> 
> 2.2 Ensure that foreground and background color combinations provide
> sufficient contrast when viewed by someone having color deficits or
> when viewed on a black and white screen. [Priority 2 for images,
> Priority 3 for text].
> 
> What's the catch?  The catch is, as with any CSS, trying to figure out
> if it's supported by the web browsers.  Eric Meyer's CSS charts at
> http://www.webreview.com/style/ (bookmark those if you haven't!) don't
> seem to touch on this.
> 
> --Kynn
> 
> PS:  The answer to Pat's question -- what is the accessible way to do
> this? -- is to use CSS.  That was easy. ;)

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Received on Friday, 6 July 2001 16:22:07 UTC