Re: SV: Color coding

Tuppence worth... 

Colour, ignoring for a moment the WCAG guidelines in this respect, may not
mean anything at all to me, even as a non-AT user. I may simply think that the
difference suggests i am looking at your personal colour scheme to indicate
un-visited/active/visited links.

Over the years i have become more and more of a fan of tiny little images (aka
icons) to indicate all kinds of peripheral information on a page. They are
visually accessible and can be tailored with suitable alt descriptions (or
none if more relevant). Eg: a little red star to indicate required fields in a
form and the alt text reads 'required' (so that screenreaders would read
required and not asterisk after the form label); similarly for external links
a tiny image and information about the external file in the alt text (as
little or as much as may be relevant). More... a common error on many websites
replaced by an arrow pointing away from the story and alt text reads ... more
about 'article heading'... etc. indicate width or height in stylesheets for
your little image, using 'em' and they'll even scale as text-size is increased. 

Kind regards
Harry

Mob: +44 7826 926 994
http://uk.linkedin.com/in/harryloots

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---------- Original Message -----------
From: "Morten Tollefsen" <morten@medialt.no>
To: "Jon Hanna" <jon@hackcraft.net>, "WAI Interest Group" <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Sent: Tue, 16 Feb 2010 11:04:11 +0100
Subject: SV: Color coding

> Hi!
> 
> Just a small comment and an idea. I'm blind and I'm not sure if the 
> solution below is used on some sites or not.
> 
> Most screen readers do announce if links are local, so at least 
> somebody think this is "important" information.
> 
> One alternative is to use another indication in addition to colors 
> (e.g. small background images which do not make the site more 
> unfriendly to screen readers).
> 
> Screen magnifiers handle local links in different ways, e. g. the 
> enlarged area is not necessarily moved to the correct local anchor. 
> For severely visually impaired, it can therefore be useful to know 
> if links are locale or not. Some severely visually impaired are also 
> color blind. I suppose a variant with an icon can work fine.
> 
> Best regards
> 
> Morten Tollefsen
> www.medialt.no, +47 908 99 305
> MSN: mortentollefsen@hotmail.com, Skype: morten.tollefsen
> twitter.com/mortentollefsen
> 
> -----Opprinnelig melding-----
> Fra: w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org] 
> På vegne av Jon Hanna
 Sendt: 16. februar 2010 10:47
 Til: WAI 
> Interest Group
 Emne: Re: Color coding
> 
> Ginger Claassen wrote:
> > Dear all,
> > 
> > I have a small problem. Currently I am working on my website and I was 
> > thinking about color coding the links on the site - one color for 
> > external links and one for links to content on my site. If the contrast 
> > is sufficient enough staying in the suggested range would this still be 
> > accessible for people who suffering from color blindness?
> 
> Avoid commonly confused colours, and don't use colour as the sole 
> indicator of important information. I wouldn't consider whether a 
> link 
 is "external" or "internal" as important information, so as 
> long as it 
 was high-contrast, I would be too concerned beyond that.
------- End of Original Message -------

Received on Tuesday, 16 February 2010 10:40:41 UTC