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 12:53:30 UTC