Re: Alternative Style Sheets

> For people with disabilities or special needs, then an user stylesheet is
> necessary.

But should we really expect all users to write their own stylesheets? I agree, they should have the option. But I'd rather offer them a good solution where I still have a degree of control.

On 17 Oct 2012, at 02:14, Gérard Talbot <www-style@gtalbot.org> wrote:

> 
> Le Lun 15 octobre 2012 6:22, Antony Kennedy a écrit :
>> Agree.
>> 
>> So, my overall points:
>> 
>> 1) Sometimes design and business requirements exclude users or
>> accessibility concerns. Alternate stylesheets provide a clever
>> alternative.
> 
> I do not understand (and do not agree with, do not support) this logic.
> Business exclude users and accessibility concerns but author can/will
> provide alternate stylesheets.
> 
> 
>> 2) Although it is possible to create a website that satisfies (nearly) all
>> WCAG guidelines, and allows text resizing and is friendly to user
>> stylesheets etc, this can be constrictive to design and not everyone is
>> technical enough to fix these things (nor should they have to be). I'm not
>> saying this is a best-case scenario – we should code to guidelines
>> whenever possible – but in the real world, brand guidelines and
>> design/client requirements do not always make this possible.
>> 
>> 3) To Gérard's point, yes it is possible to make a design that satisfies
>> WCAG guidelines. My point was, this does not necessarily satisfy *user*
>> requirements.
> 
> I had only 2 main concerns: font-size that honors the user's settings and
> sufficient color/brightness contrast. That's it.
> 
>> Some users (like those with particular kinds of dyslexia)
>> find high contrast designs hard to read.
> 
> For people with disabilities or special needs, then an user stylesheet is
> necessary.
> 
>> Or white backgrounds' glare
>> obstructs their view of the black text - even though this is at maximum
>> contrast.
> 
> On my own person website, 80% of all my webpages use light gray background
> color. And I achieve sufficient color contrast.
> 
>> There is  simply not one stylesheet that will satisfy every
>> user, and tools are not yet good enough to solve all of the problems for
>> us without making the website hideous or illegible.
> 
> Example given: http://cwilso.com/
> 
> Unstyled body text is set to 12px (normal <p>) at
> http://cwilso.com/
> and the background color is dark ('background-color: #1B1814'), color is
> 'color: #999;' (not even white!) these 2 factors combined make it
> unnecessarly and frustratingly difficult to read.
> 
> "
> Success Criterion 1.4.3  of WCAG 2.0  requires the visual presentation of
> text and images of text has a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1
> 
> (...)
> Results for Luminosity Contrast Ratio
> 
> The contrast ratio is: 6.21:1
> 
> Passed at Level AA for regular text, and pass at Level AAA for large text:
> If the text is large text (at least 18 point or 14 point bold), the
> luminosity contrast ratio is sufficient for the chosen colours at Level
> AAA; otherwise, Level AA (#1B1814 and #999).
> "
> Results from
> http://juicystudio.com/services/luminositycontrastratio.php
> 
> but, you see, the text is 25% smaller than what is defined as normal text
> size.
> 
> 
>> 4) If an author wants to make multiple versions of a stylesheet for their
>> website, for different colour schemes just as different designs (like the
>> football club example given previously) why would we not make it easy for
>> the author to do this?
> 
> I am not against making it easy for authors to do alternate stylesheets. I
> am very much against websites that do not do the basics and do not even
> understand what basic color contrast and respect of the users' font-size
> request.
> 
>> Sure, authors can abuse it, but they can abuse
>> everything they are given. We have to give them the option to be
>> altruistic.
> 
> 
> Alternate stylesheets for stylish presentations is okay with me. I
> reviewed, corrected and improved the alternate stylesheets in the
> "KazGarden-Project"
> http://www.gimp-werkstatt.de/kaze/
> and provided my own alternate stylesheet (see Browser-bug stylesheet).
> 
> 
> 
>> 5) Whenever there is a use case that is prolific in being hacked around,
>> this is always a perfect opportunity for standardisation (seriously, when
>> will I have to stop writing JS to get text-overflow:ellipsis; to work over
>> multiple lines?). I see often websites with an option for different colour
>> schemes for accessibility, but they use JS and cookies to implement their
>> own opinion of what an alternate stylesheet should be. Standardising this
>> behaviour ensures that it is easy for authors to implement these things if
>> they want to, instead of coming up with the same bugs that everyone else
>> already has, and the user gets a predictable and safe behaviour.
> 
> I think how to notify users/visitors of alternate stylesheets available
> for a webpage is up to UA developers. Chrome has an extension that seems
> good in that regards. Older Firefox versions were using the status bar.
> 
> Gérard
> 
>> Thanks.
>> 
>> AK
>> 
>> On 15 Oct 2012, at 10:13, Markus Ernst <derernst@gmx.ch> wrote:
>> 
>>> Am 14.10.2012 03:59 schrieb "Gérard Talbot":
>>>>> 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.
>>>> 
>>>> Most likely those football club fans are under 35-40 years old
>>>> when/where
>>>> they do not mind small (and/or frozen) font sizes. Also, often web
>>>> designers are youngsters who do not have low vision and who prefer to
>>>> have
>>>> a lot of stuff filing webpages and lots of flash animated stuff,
>>>> cosmetic
>>>> effects, over-excessively driven by javascript, DHTML, etc.
>>>> 
>>>>> 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.
>>>> 
>>>> Markus, I respectfully still disagree with you. I do not want websites
>>>> to
>>>> create, develop, manage, tune alternate stylesheets in the name
>>>> accessible
>>>> font-size and suitable/reasonable color contrast for
>>>> readability/legibility purposes. I want the normal default style sheets
>>>> to
>>>> be accessible, not to override users' font-size, etc.
>>> 
>>> Well I agree with these points of yours. The crucial question in this
>>> branch of the thread seems to be: Should the CSS spec be educational,
>>> should it force authors towards what the spec authors consider good
>>> design, and penalize bad design? Or is it ok also to offer good
>>> workarounds for bad design?
>>> 
>>> I personnally tend to the latter. You can't stop people from making bad
>>> designs if they think what they create is "cool". But you could convince
>>> some of them to provide a useful alternative for those who have problems
>>> with that "cool" stuff. This is the background of my suggestion.
>>> 
>> 
>> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> CSS 2.1 Test suite RC6, March 23rd 2011
> http://test.csswg.org/suites/css2.1/20110323/html4/toc.html
> 
> Contributions to CSS 2.1 test suite
> http://www.gtalbot.org/BrowserBugsSection/css21testsuite/
> 
> Web authors' contributions to CSS 2.1 test suite
> http://www.gtalbot.org/BrowserBugsSection/css21testsuite/web-authors-contributions-css21-testsuite.html
>

Received on Thursday, 18 October 2012 18:38:49 UTC