[WEB4LIB] Re: Web page color & accessibility

[John Creech]

Thank you for your response, Lee.  I've encountered the printing problems,
too, and likely will not implement this, but was curious if there was
empirical evidence to argue against the practice.  The consensus here
seems to be that yes, dark backgrounds w/ light text create unnecessary
problems for visually impaired users.

John Creech, CWU Library

On Tue, 3 Dec 2002, Lee Jaffe wrote:

> 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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