AW: Guideline 2: colour

> > May I suggest adding something along the lines of "Ensure 
> that if you
> > specify any one of foreground, background, and link 
> colours, you specify
> > them all."? Otherwise we might have the following scenario:
> > 
> > Most graphical browsers have a white or light grey background by
> > default, on which black text shows up well. So page author A might
> > choose to specify that the body of his document be rendered 
> in black.
> > However, user B might have set his browser to display white 
> text on a
> > black background by default. Because A overrode the default 
> with black
> > text, B will see black text on a black background. This 
> wouldn't have
> > happened if A had specified both foreground and background colours.
> 
> Thanks for the suggestion Philip.
> 
> I think we're aware of this problem, and it was discussed in the group
> in the past; we'll raise it again, but my guess is that it's not an
> accessibility issue per se, it's just a plain bug (black on black: all
> regular graphical users are affected).

Well, maybe so -- but not a bug in the browser in my opinion; rather, a bug
in the thought processes or methods of the page author. And it does limit
accessibility (to quote a phrase from your page, "one or more groups will
find it impossible to access information in the document" -- in this case,
users of graphical browsers). Accessibility isn't an issue only for those
with visual impediments etc.; pages should be accessible also for "normal"
people (this is an odd case where people using screen readers, text-only
browsers etc. actually have *easier* access to the information than people
using a graphical browser -- and reminds me of the odd page that was
"optimised for Lynx" by having white text on white background and text in
image ALT attributes; a Lynx user would see all the text, while a user of a
graphical browser wouldn't see anything). That's why I consider this
"specifying foreground *and* background colours, or neither" an
accessibility issue, and a fairly important one, too.

Cheers,
Philip

Received on Friday, 7 May 1999 06:19:46 UTC