Re: [mediaqueries] light-level

> On Feb 6, 2016, at 11:39, fantasai <fantasai.lists@inkedblade.net> wrote:
> 
> # For accessibility purposes, user agents may offer manual
> # controls allowing the user to switch between the 3 levels
> # of independently of the ambient light level, as high
> # contrast or low contrast styles may be more suitable for
> # users with visual disabilities.
> #
> # Using this media feature for accessibility purposes
> # overlaps a lot with the high-contrast media feature
> # proposed by Microsoft. Can we adjust this so that it
> # covers all use cases for both, or somehow modify them
> # to work in an orthogonal, rather than overlapping, fashion?
> 
> So, I don't think we should mix up accessibility and light-level.
> Responses to light-level can involve contrast but also background/
> foreground swaps: e.g. I might go with a light-on-dark scheme in
> dim lighting to avoid disrupting low-light vision, but not
> necessarily reduce the contrast.
> 
> If we want to present contrast preferences, that should be
> explicit. We can show examples where someone who is drawing
> up a low-contrast scheme for dim lighting *also* applies that
> for people with a contrast preference, but they shouldn't be
> tied together.
> 
> So I'd remove this issue and work on addressing the need for
> contrast or foreground/background preferences.


On the one hand, I agree with you that use cases can be different
enough that conflating the two concepts may be wrong.

On the other hand, I think it would be preferable if we could
avoid splitting this in a way that gave us one MQ which is for
accessibility purposes only. Having accessibility features overlap
with usability features greatly increases the odds that they
actually get used by authors.

How much overlap there is between light level and contrast isn't
entirely clear to me, but I don't think it's zero, so I don't want
to be too quick at separating the accessibility aspect from the rest.

I am perfectly fine with rephrasing the issue, but I think it is worth
capturing the facts that:
* We have a contrast media feature on the radar, which may have some
  overlap with this
* light-level and contrast have accessibility implications, and that
  should be taken into account when devising which MQs should exist
  and how they interact

 - Florian

Received on Monday, 8 February 2016 02:50:31 UTC