[WEB4LIB] How to improve web links for visually impaired reading.

[Thomas Dowling]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Don Saklad" <dsaklad at gnu.org>
To: "Multiple recipients of list" <web4lib at webjunction.org>
Sent: Tuesday, January 23, 2001 10:12 AM
Subject: [WEB4LIB] How to improve web links for visually impaired reading.


> Would any of you nice folks out there outline what
> improvement could be made and exactly how to do the
> improvement step by step by example
> http://GuideToProblematicalLibraryUse.weblogs.com
>


The two most obvious (to me):

First, this snippet:

=========
  body, td, p {
    font-family: Times New Roman, Times, serif;
    font-size: 12px;
    }
=========

Don't use absolute font sizes.  You have no idea how small a 12 pixel-high
letter is on my screen (in fact, your lower-case letters are barely a
millimeter high for me).  And of course this hoses any zoom function in
the browser.  Unless there really is an overriding reason, don't set
default font sizes at all; set other font sizes only with relative
settings, and then only within a pretty narrow range of sizes.  I tend to
use the CSS properties "larger" and "smaller", or 80%/.8em to 125%/1.25em
(when I can using it without Netscape 4 going insane over it).  BTW, you
should quote font names with spaces in them.


Second, don't assign background colors without assigning foreground
colors, and vice versa.  It's always possible* that someone with vision
problems finds it easier to read light text on a dark background and sets
their browser that way; you establish a light background without touching
the foreground, and the contrast is gone.

(*...except that there are so many pages that do this, I can't imagine
someone setting their browser this way without disabling document color
choices.)


You may also want to spend some time with an HTML validator and think
about not using absolute table widths.


Thomas Dowling
OhioLINK - Ohio Library and Information Network
tdowling at ohiolink.edu