Suggestion for WAI Page Authoring Guidelines

Hi!

I'd really appreciate it if you could add the following technique in the
WAI Page Authoring Guidelines.
---
When specifying background colors for a table, table cell, or table row,
you must  specify the color of the text that will be displayed in that
table, table cell, or table row (of course, the font color should
contrast well with the background color).
    If you don't specify the font color, and if the user has set a
different text color for their page, it is likely that they won't be
able to read the information well. Several months ago on a Web
application that I was working on, I specified a light-yellow background
color for a table row (#ffffcc) and assuming that the default font color
is black, I didn't specify the text color. A person with color vision
deficiency called me to inform me that he couldn't read the text in
certain rows of the page. On furher probing I found that to make pages
more readable (to accommodate for his color vision deficiency), he had
set the preferences in Netscape Communicator such that the page
background color was  dark-blue and the text color was light-yellow. Now
since I had changed the table row background color to light-yellow, he
was essentially seeing light-yellow text on light-yellow background. He
knew the information was there, so he would select the text and read the
reverse-highlighted text. And, all I needed to do was specify the text
color to black to make the page accessible.
---

Thank you.

Pawan...
--
Pawan R. Vora
U S WEST Communications
pvora@uswest.com
303-685-2023

Received on Friday, 16 October 1998 15:10:42 UTC