Re: SV: Color coding

Hello, Gregg.

For me (user with low vision due to retinitis pigmentosa), most of these 
small icons are almost "invisible" or noticeable. Most of the "new 
window" icons I've seen are so small that it's impossible to distinguish 
them near the link text. Most of them have also bad contrast, and many 
of them completely dissapear when you switch to high contrast settings, 
because they are designed thinking in a white background. Additionally, 
some of them are confusing and do not represent very well the fact that 
they will open a new window. Only my previous experience on this type of 
behaviour will do the trick and alert me that this is a "new window 
icon", but not the icon itself.

And if you use more than one type of icon (one for new windows, another 
one for word, another one for PDF, another to print the page, provide a 
sound version, e-mail the article, etc.), then I will not be able to 
easily distinguish between all of them and will miss important information.

Of course, colour coding is not enough, and small icons are better, but 
"icon only" solutions (at least as they are now) are not perfect.

Gregg wrote:
> If you used a small visible icon to mark external links, and put alt 
> text on them - then everyone, sighted or not, using a screen reader or 
> not, colorblind or not, would know that these links are external.  It 
> would also be more obvious to people than color coding where people 
> might not make the connection or notice the difference in color even 
> if not colorblind.   .

Received on Tuesday, 16 February 2010 15:54:33 UTC