Re: Comments on WCAG 2.0 - 1.4.3. Contrast (Minimum)

On Sun, Mar 30, 2008 at 12:09 PM, Ramón Corominas
<ramon@ramoncorominas.com> wrote:
>
> > ----------------------------------------------------------
> > Comment 1: Level A for low or no-contrast content
> > Source:
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-comments-wcag20/2008Feb/0027.html
> > (Issue ID: 2479)
> > Status: VERIFIED / NOT ACCEPTED
> > ----------------------------
> >
> >
>  My concerns are mostly about form fields without borders or with very light
> ones, over a light background (in many cases with light shades of grey).
> This is a relatively common practice, and it's not solved with "normal" ways
> to improve contrast in current user agents, that usually only affect to the
> text and not to the form fields themselves.
>
>  Of course advanced users can change the user style sheet with !important,
> but they would need to know how to make such technological things, which is
> far away from real world, and IMHO is opposite to accesibility philosophy.
> We must assume that users don't know much about these technologies, so they
> will rely on user agents to setup their color preferences. Now, both
> Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox do not provide any option to change
> border color of form fields. They also could completely disable style
> sheets, but I think this would be like forcing users to see the Internet as
> a "text-only" world. For me that is not real accesibility.
>
>  I agree that my example was not "real world" for text/background contrast,
> but very near to reality in the case of form fields and their borders. My
> mistake was to use "text contrast", that certainly does not represent the
> real problem. So here are some real world examples of form fields with very
> low contrast (all of them taken from a "first results page" in Google):
>
>  1. A contact form
>  http://www.statsronk.com/contact/
>
>  Here we have a contact form where fields are invisible for me. I can know
> about their existence because there are textual references to them, but of
> course not because they are visible.
>
>  background: #f1f1f1 (external background = #ffffff; Contrast Ratio = 1.13:1
> -almost invisible for everybody-)
>  border-color: #b5ccba (around = #ffffff/#f1f1f1; CR = 1.71:1/1.51:1)
>
>  2. A search form
>  http://www.ehow.com/
>
>  Here, the text field for search terms is completely invisible over a very
> light background. Again, I can guess that it is there, to the left of the
> button, but I cannot see it directly.
>
>  background: #ffffff (external = #ebeef0; CR = 1.17:1)
>  border-color: #d0d7dc (around = #ffffff/ebeef0; CR = 1.45:1/1.25:1)
>
>  In the previous examples, even with assistive technology to enhance
> contrast, I am not able to see it (I used MAGiC).
>
>  3. A web Page to test contrast (!)
>  http://juicystudio.com/services/luminositycontrastratio.php
>
>  Here the border contrast is a bit better, but I can only know that there
> are fields because they provide a default text inside them. Without it, the
> fields would be invisible. Now, with assistive technology I can see the
> border.
>
>  background: #ffffff (external = #ffffff; contrast = 1.0:1 -invisible-)
>  border-color: #7f9db9 (around = #ffffff; contrast = 2.83:1)
>
>  All these examples are a very representative sample of a common practice
> with form fields: very light borders, very light backgrounds, almost
> invisible form fields. I've "seen" this kind of things a lot of times with
> all kind of forms (user login, contact forms, forums...).
>
>  Finally, I must say that I'm surprised -and a bit dissapointed- by your
> last paragraph, when you say -more or less- that "as we cannot find any web
> site that do not met the 5:1 contrast rule, there should not a problem with
> it". It sounds to me like "nobody seems to do it, so don't worry about
> that".
>
>  My opinion is that WCAG must prevent all posible issues of accessibility
> that could cause problems to users. In fact, I think that we must reverse
> the arguments: if all current websites already met the contrast rule, why
> should it be a problem for designers? As a designer, I don't see it as a
> restriction, but a help, because this ensures that all my designs will be
> readable by most people.
>
>  Regards,
>  Ramón Corominas.
>
> > Original Comment:
> > ----------------------------
> >
> > I've read the rationale about not moving this criterion to Level A,
> > arguing that "assistive technology will be able to present the text or
> > text equivalent of this content to the user".
> >
> > However, for people with no assistive technology (because they don't
> > really need it, or even for people with good sight), when the text has
> > no contrast (or very low contrast), the content will not be perceived,
> > or even noticed.
> >
> > I think that when people doesn't even notice that there is some
> > content that they should be aware of, they will not even think about
> > using some kind of trick to find it, so the content will not be
> > perceived at all. It would be the same as if this content does not
> > exist.
> >
> > An example of this here:
> >
> > http://ramoncorominas.com/wcag20/level_a_1_4_3.htm
> >
> >
> > I am conscious that this is an exaggerated example, but I, as visually
> > impaired, sometimes find things like this, where there is a content
> > that I don't even know that exists.
> >
> > Sometimes I "discover" this kind of content when a well-sighted friend
> > tells me about its existence after some navigation trying to find it
> > through a site (an example of this are some form controls with no
> > border, over a very light gray background).
> >
> > Proposed Change:
> > Raise 1.4.3 to Level A, or introduce some Level A rule to force this
> > kind of content perceivable without assistive technology.
> >
> > ---------------------------------------------
> > Response from Working Group:
> > ---------------------------------------------
> >
> > We considered this at length and we have left 1.4.3 Contrast (Minimum)
> > at level AA. Since there are ways to make text high contrast, and we
> > expect new ones to become available in the future, we did not require
> > it at Level A (to make up for user agent features) due to the
> > restrictions it places on color palettes.
> >
> > Users with contrast perception difficulties may be able to set a
> > custom style sheet with !important on the font color choices, so even
> > though they're not using assistive technology they can customize their
> > presentation to get a higher contrast presentation.
> >
> > In your example, the text at the end of the page would not be visible
> > to anyone, which would make the page no less usable for people with
> > disabilities than without. While we realize that your example
> > represents an extreme, we have not found that examples of real-world
> > sites which contain significant barriers of this nature. In a review
> > of a variety of popular Web sites, we only found a few places on a
> > couple of pages where 5:1 was not met.
> >


---------------------------------------------
Response from Working Group:
---------------------------------------------
Thank you for the examples. They are interesting because none of them
violates SC 1.4.3 or 1.4.6 because in all cases, there is sufficient
contrast between the text and its background.

The accessibility issue that you raise, however, is that you cannot
perceive the empty text fields because the color schemes used to
render them do not have enough contrast. Assistive technology can
identify and highlight the fields, since they can be programmatically
determined, so this is still not a candidate for Level A.

We have added an advisory technique for this issue:
Providing sufficient color contrast for empty text fields (future link)

And we have added the following to the Understanding documents:
See also Success Criterion 2.4.7 regarding techniques for indicating
keyboard focus.

Thanks again for the interest that you have taken in these guidelines.
Could we ask you to let us know whether or not you are satisfied with
this response by Wed, April 16?

Loretta Guarino Reid, WCAG WG Co-Chair
Gregg Vanderheiden, WCAG WG Co-Chair
Michael Cooper, WCAG WG Staff Contact

On behalf of the WCAG Working Group

Received on Friday, 11 April 2008 17:24:47 UTC