[WEB4LIB] Web page color & accessibility

[Lee Jaffe]

I do remember several places where guidelines
specifically recommend against dark backgrounds
and lighter text because of poor readability.  
However, where I saw these I can't tell you
off the top of my head.  On the other hand, I
do have some concrete experience that recommends
against the practice.  In printing such pages, 
there are two choices, neither of which is at
all good:  either print background is set to
"off" in the print setup, in which case the user
prints white (or light) text on white paper; or
print background is set "on", rendering the page
readable but using up much more toner per page
than is economical.  One of our lab managers
blocked access to class sites where the instructor
insisted on using black backgrounds because it
ran our printers dry 4x-5x faster than normal use.

-- Lee Jaffe, UC Santa Cruz

Quoting John Creech <John.Creech at cwu.EDU>:

> >From an accessibility standpoint, does anyone know of
> any studies or other
> data that speak to setting a dark background for a class,
> say the color
> maroon, and then setting font color to white? I'm aware
> of the dangers of
> setting colors without enough contrast betwen background
> and font color,
> but are there problems with the above example where the
> white text would
> clearly stand out against the dark background?  Thanks.
> 
> John Creech
> Electronic Resources & Systems Librarian
> Central Washington University Library
> 400 E. 8th Ave. | Ellensburg, WA 98926 |
> office - 509.963.1081 || fax - 509.963.3684
> creechj at www.lib.cwu.edu
> 
> 
> 




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