RE: Are Small Text buttons level 2 compliant

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 18:55:06 UTC