Jan Richards recently pointed out that UI Options lacks a low-contrast option. I followed up with some questions around what that might look like. Here are his answers:
> Can you recommend any particular colour values? I used your question as an excuse to read up on this.... :) This is an excellent resource: http://www.tader.info/ One of the places it points are some sample user CSS here: http://www.w3.org/WAI/RD/2012/text-customization/r14#dick The exact values are in a paper behind a pay-wall, but I colour-sampled them and got: 1 Dark gray (#222222) on lime (#FAFEFA) = contrast: 15.6:1 (NOT low contrast) 2 Light (#A8A49B) on dark brown (#413936) = contrast: 4.5:1 3 Dark (#301E1C) on light brown (#AB9B79) = contrast: 5.8:1 4 Light (#BDBDBB) on dark gray (#343434) = contrast: 6.6:1 5 Yellow on Black (UIOptions has already) = contrast: 19.6:1 (NOT low contrast) > Is grey scale a common preference? If so, can you recommend particular greys? > If not, is there another combination? Not that I have seen. A lot of the low contrast examples I've seen tend to use earth tones, but I should note that Wayne Dick's personal preferences may be over-represented. An interesting thing to try out would be whether there could be two contrast sliders...a "foreground brightness" and a "background brightness". By adjusting them the user could invert the colours but also set a darkness "floor" and a lightness "ceiling". > Are there any other changes that would typically be desired at the same time? > For example, with high contrast, we might include extra emphasis on links, as > well as the colour choices. Anything you can think of for low contrast? I think the extra emphasis on links would help here as well. Other things to consider: - ability to tighten margins for people with narrowed visual fields (in some cases their acuity is just fine) - putting borders around blocks of text and headers - this delimits things, especially at high magnifications There are lots of other text display characteristics listed here, some of which UIOptions already does: http://www.tader.info/display.html Another idea: - The two-slider control idea might also work for Text-Size.... a "smallest text" slider and "largest text" slider that could be used together to make sure text was not below a certain size but also that heading text did not grow to a ridiculous size. Unlike the foreground/background brightness controls, these wouldn't be able to cross. Some useful links: http://www.hgrebdes.com/colour/spectrum/colourvisibility.html http://hslpicker.com/#04c http://www.w3.org/WAI/RD/2012/text-customization/ http://www.badeyes.com/myths-about-low-vision/#more-369 -- Anastasia Cheetham Inclusive Design Research Centre [email protected] Inclusive Design Institute OCAD University _______________________________________________________ fluid-work mailing list - [email protected] To unsubscribe, change settings or access archives, see http://lists.idrc.ocad.ca/mailman/listinfo/fluid-work
