- From: Cynthia Shelly <cyns@whatuwant.net>
- Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2000 15:57:19 -0700
- To: "'Leonard R. Kasday'" <kasday@acm.org>, Kynn Bartlett <kynn@idyllmtn.com>, "Poehlman, David" <David.Poehlman@usmint.treas.gov>, "'Kynn Bartlett'" <kynn-edapta@idyllmtn.com>, Charles McCathieNevile <charles@w3.org>
- Cc: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org, WAI ER group <w3c-wai-er-ig@w3.org>, WAI UA group <w3c-wai-ua@w3.org>
On the issue of branding... I am aware of a company that has as a part of its branding the use of a particular font for headings in documents. This font treatment predates the Web, and is used in a variety of paper-based branding materials. Millions of dollars have been spent building this brand. The font in question is not installed on many systems, and is not likely to be for a variety of non-technical reasons. Part of the branding requirement is that the font appear in an anti-aliased form. As a result of all of this, there are headings created in gifs (with alt text) on some of this company's Web sites. The Web developers and designers would actually prefer not to do this, since it's a lot of extra work and makes automated creation of content difficult. But, there really isn't a good alternative. So, they do it. -----Original Message----- From: Leonard R. Kasday [mailto:kasday@acm.org] Sent: Tuesday, September 26, 2000 12:38 PM To: Kynn Bartlett; Poehlman, David; 'Kynn Bartlett'; Charles McCathieNevile Cc: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org; WAI ER group; WAI UA group Subject: RE: Are Small Text buttons level 2 compliant There is another issue here, the issue of branding, i.e. creating a distinctive, memorable look that a person associates with a particular brand. I understand the importance of branding. I'd really like to hear from graphical designers if there are cases where branding requires non-standard fonts... instead of e.g. using a few small images for logos, bullets, and other decorations.. or even having a large image... and relying on text with a coordinated font and background color for the rest of the page. Len At 10:35 AM 9/26/00 -0700, Kynn Bartlett wrote: >At 1:28 PM -0400 9/26/00, Poehlman, David wrote: >>I explained this in the message. what I disagree with is that the text can >>be small. some people have low enough vision that they need larger text but >>not use assistives to achieve it. > >Aha, okay. So you are arguing that web designers have to account for >people who need assistive technology, could benefit from assistive >technology, may even have access to assistive technology (such as >the screen magnifier in Windows), but who choose not to employ it? > >That's a very dangerous argument to propose, you realize... I argue >that there are ways for those users who need larger text to get the >larger text without requiring that web designers _remove_ their >graphical text images. The implications of placing the burden on the >web designer instead of on the user are that unreasonable expectations >are asked of the designer, and she is unable to reasonably comply with >those requirements. Thus, she ignores them. > >--Kynn >-- >-- >Kynn Bartlett <kynn@idyllmtn.com> >http://www.kynn.com/ -- Leonard R. Kasday, Ph.D. Institute on Disabilities/UAP and Dept. of Electrical Engineering at Temple University (215) 204-2247 (voice) (800) 750-7428 (TTY) http://astro.temple.edu/~kasday mailto:kasday@acm.org Chair, W3C Web Accessibility Initiative Evaluation and Repair Tools Group http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/IG/ The WAVE web page accessibility evaluation assistant: http://www.temple.edu/inst_disabilities/piat/wave/
Received on Friday, 29 September 2000 18:55:05 UTC