Re: Alternative Style Sheets

Am 12.10.2012 22:20 schrieb "Gérard Talbot":
>
> Le Ven 12 octobre 2012 13:14, Markus Ernst a écrit :
>
>> I think that the concept of alternate style sheets is somehow too
>> unspecific for this use case. To address it, it would be nice to specify
>> a standardized set of style sheet alternatives for the most common
>> accessibility needs, such as big font size, high contrast, keyboard-only
>> navigation or whatever.
>
>
> I do not agree. Any webpage can be styled to honor the preferred font-size
> of the user. The font size should ideally be left to the user to decide.
> So web authors shouldn't set it in webpage. Several people have explained
> this before. Felix Miata, Stephen Poley, Oliver Reichenstein, etc

[...]

> My position is: by default, the persistent, the preferred and the
> alternate [1] stylesheets should always respect and honor the user's
> font-size as set in his UA and they should always have sufficient,
> effective color contrast promoting readability/legibility.

You state that accessibility is not a use case for alternate style 
sheets, because accessibility should be the base of every design. In an 
ideal world I would agree. But in reality, authors are most often not 
free to apply perfectly accessible designs. We have to stick to CD 
guidelines, or even get fully elaborated page designs from Graphic 
Designers that we have to implement.

In these cases alternate stylesheets could be of help, but only (or at 
least much better) if their purpose would be identifiable by the 
browser, which would be possible with a specified set of accessibility 
style sheets.

Let me give you an example. My favorite football club recently 
redesigned their website. It's awful: http://www.fcz.ch - they seemed to 
try hard to make it look "hip hop" resp. "urban", as they expect this to 
be what the fans like. I doubt that there was any chance for the web 
designer to change the design towards more accessibility. But if (s)he 
could have suggested one or two alternate style sheets that respect 
accessibility needs, I am sure (s)he would have got the budget to write 
them.

Received on Saturday, 13 October 2012 09:30:28 UTC