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Bob
OK, the way I see it, Jakob Nielsen is over-confident in his reliance on feedforward analysis. It’s not surprising that his encyclia miss as much as they net. Like, when was the last time JN & Group saw that separating content from design makes the real-world usability problems of a site rectifiable in real-time, based on real-world user experience. Based on feedback. Dialogue between site users and site designers—A dimension of usability and accessibility as key to site success as the guideline on where to place the search box … Which is to say, thanks for increased contrast between text and background. Makes a difference to my eyes.
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chops
“Foreground/background distinctions are, as they say, a personal thing. WAI has provided no evidence that authors can reasonably anticipate how a person with a visual impairment or learning disability will be confused by figure–ground combinations. Further, who runs in “256 grayscale” anymore, let alone black and white (i.e., one-bit colour, like the original Macintosh)?”
I found this rather amusing. I do not believe that the recommendation of 256 greyscale and black and white legibility is because of people actually running in that mode. I guess you haven’t heard of the design technique in converting to greyscale to check contrast.
It’s a pretty reasonable way to anticipate confusion if you ask me.
(BTW, I see “unclear” is actually an ID on an H3 tag. Have named anchors been deprecated? I acknowledge this is probably more maintainable than having the separate anchor; on the other hand it is a choice that makes same-page links inaccessible to some browsers.)
It is no longer possible on many video cards to test in 256 grayscale; they don’t make grayscale available as an option. It’s a pity, as some people do see the world in grayscale.
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Charles
That is the anchor C_8
(which is on a page which is XHTML 1.0 strict and which works in Netscape 4)
so I can’t use same-page links in Netscape 4 on ALA. this is a shame, as I find the text much easier to read in Netscape 4 where it is black on white and not gray on white, which I, like Bob, find tiring to read.
I have a problem with the idea of having to adjust my monitor, which is set to Mac standard gamma but which is aging, for a particular site. But if you put an id of “alistapart” on your body tag, I could override the text colors for your site in my personal style sheet (in the aware browsers) in the compliant browsers, according to some article or other I read.
26 Reader Comments
Back to the ArticleJoe Clark
Andreas K. Bittner has translated the original article into German, and Tomas Casper has HTMLified it.
http://www.einfach-fuer-alle.de/artikel/rettet-die-wcag/
Of course, you have not experienced me until you have read me in the original German.
Bob
OK, the way I see it, Jakob Nielsen is over-confident in his reliance on feedforward analysis. It’s not surprising that his encyclia miss as much as they net. Like, when was the last time JN & Group saw that separating content from design makes the real-world usability problems of a site rectifiable in real-time, based on real-world user experience. Based on feedback. Dialogue between site users and site designers—A dimension of usability and accessibility as key to site success as the guideline on where to place the search box … Which is to say, thanks for increased contrast between text and background. Makes a difference to my eyes.
chops
“Foreground/background distinctions are, as they say, a personal thing. WAI has provided no evidence that authors can reasonably anticipate how a person with a visual impairment or learning disability will be confused by figure–ground combinations. Further, who runs in “256 grayscale” anymore, let alone black and white (i.e., one-bit colour, like the original Macintosh)?”
I found this rather amusing. I do not believe that the recommendation of 256 greyscale and black and white legibility is because of people actually running in that mode. I guess you haven’t heard of the design technique in converting to greyscale to check contrast.
It’s a pretty reasonable way to anticipate confusion if you ask me.
Charles
http://alistapart.com/articles/saveaccessibility/#unclear
(BTW, I see “unclear” is actually an ID on an H3 tag. Have named anchors been deprecated? I acknowledge this is probably more maintainable than having the separate anchor; on the other hand it is a choice that makes same-page links inaccessible to some browsers.)
It is no longer possible on many video cards to test in 256 grayscale; they don’t make grayscale available as an option. It’s a pity, as some people do see the world in grayscale.
http://alistapart.com/articles/saveaccessibility/#impossible
“live description has been attempted a mere five times in the broadcast sphere”
Not to minimize the difficulty or expense of this, but I would put the number of attempts in the thousands. It’s called sportscasting.
Charles
In reference to my parenthetical comment on breaking same-page links in my preceding post, I see the relevant W3C recommendation here:
http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/#C_8
(which is on a page which is XHTML 1.0 strict and which works)
This looks like future XHTML plans will conflict with the backward compatibility requirement.
And I withdraw my “some browsers” comment and replace it with “Netscape 4”, as I see IE 5.1/Mac, iCab 2.9 and Lynx accept the same-page link to an ID.
Charles
That is the anchor C_8
(which is on a page which is XHTML 1.0 strict and which works in Netscape 4)
so I can’t use same-page links in Netscape 4 on ALA. this is a shame, as I find the text much easier to read in Netscape 4 where it is black on white and not gray on white, which I, like Bob, find tiring to read.
I have a problem with the idea of having to adjust my monitor, which is set to Mac standard gamma but which is aging, for a particular site. But if you put an id of “alistapart” on your body tag, I could override the text colors for your site in my personal style sheet (in the aware browsers) in the compliant browsers, according to some article or other I read.