4 ms·

Any choice you make will exclude some people. The colorblind won't be able to read it if you use some color combinations. Using such high-contrast fonts hurts m

by TheDong 12y ago

Any choice you make will exclude some people. The colorblind won't be able to read it if you use some color combinations. Using such high-contrast fonts hurts my eyes and thus excludes me from enjoying it as much. It's likely people arenot "chosing to exclude", but rather happens to as a byproduct. It's far more likely someone chose low-contrast because they wished to help visitors eyes or for aesthetic purposes, not because they woke up that morning and said "Gosh I hate the sight-impaired". Being able to read a webpage is not a universal right. It is not the onus of the webpage to make itself readable. You don't demand that japanese webpages offer klingon translations when they only wish to reach a japanese audience simply because they're excluding those poor soles who prefer to read klingon, do you? It's perfectly reasonable to expect a user of the webpage to make it usable for themselves, whether that be by running it through google translate or turning on their OS's high contrast mode or whatever. The fact that the choice excludes people should not be bandied as if it's a real argument.

DanBC 12y ago
> It's perfectly reasonable to expect a user of the webpage to make it usable for themselves, whether that be by running it through google translate or turning on their OS's high contrast mode or whatever. No, it isn't. By deliberately choosing terrible contrast a designer is choosing to exclude people with visual impairment. That's why accessible websites is written into law and contrast is written into best practice guidance for making a website accessible. > Being able to read a webpage is not a universal right. It is not the onus of the webpage to make itself readable. There's quite a few situations where accessible websites are a human right. (Eg government websites would be covered by article 21). When you say "of course you can't read this website; you have a visual impairment" you are passing the blame. But the job of a website team - the thing they are paid for - is to provide information that's accessible to the target audience. It's not my job to read that information. I'm probably not getting paid to read the website. And bad contrast choices aren't just hard to read for people with visual impairment. They're hard to read for someone on a different monitor or in different lighting. > You don't demand that japanese webpages offer klingon translations when they only wish to reach a japanese audience simply because they're excluding those poor soles who prefer to read klingon, do you? You started by saying this was not about choosing to exclude people but here you clearly show that someone has made the choice to exclude a group. The difference being that it is fine to exclude speakers of a made up language; it's not acceptable to exclude disabled people.
- sukilot 12y ago
  Websites aren't published in braille either. As long ad the site content is compatible with standard assistive tech in the client software, it is fine.
  - zaphar 12y ago
    This is hardly the same comparisone since it's not possible to publish them in braille on a monitor. And publishing a picture of the braille letters wouldn't even help since the blind person still couldn't read them. Braille users are able to read text using a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refreshable_braille_display http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refreshable_braille_display but that's not the same thing as a monitor. Using grey text on grey backgrounds is much more similar to publishing all your text in images which makes is inaccessible to the blind person unless they install OCR software. But hey that's cool it's on them anyway right?
userbinator 12y ago
Using such high-contrast fonts hurts my eyes and thus excludes me from enjoying it as much. Your eyes and monitor may benefit from lowering the contrast/brightness. Most monitors seem to come set by default to maximum or near-maximum eye-watering brightness and contrast, which is great for in-store displays in an environment containing lots of other high-brightness lighting, but horrible for actual use. Turn it down so that black on white is comfortable to view. It's far more likely someone chose low-contrast because they wished to help visitors eyes or for aesthetic purposes It makes me wonder if those who use low-contrast designs are the same ones who have their monitors at such extreme settings that they have to compensate by reducing it on their pages, thus making it unreadable to those with their monitors set to comfortably reproduce black on white.
vacri 12y ago
Being able to read a webpage is not a universal right. So you oppose consciousness-raising of an issue, to make people aware of it? You oppose "Hey designers, here are some issues to think of"? It's perfectly reasonable to expect a user of the webpage to make it usable for themselves The solutions you offer are sledgehammers. Better to just be a good designer who is inclusive, than demand users monochrome their entire operating system just to read your site. I mean, that's even worse than "This page is best viewed in Browser X".

by TheDong 12y ago

DanBC 12y ago

> It's perfectly reasonable to expect a user of the webpage to make it usable for themselves, whether that be by running it through google translate or turning on their OS's high contrast mode or whatever. No, it isn't. By deliberately choosing terrible contrast a designer is choosing to exclude people with visual impairment. That's why accessible websites is written into law and contrast is written into best practice guidance for making a website accessible. > Being able to read a webpage is not a universal right. It is not the onus of the webpage to make itself readable. There's quite a few situations where accessible websites are a human right. (Eg government websites would be covered by article 21). When you say "of course you can't read this website; you have a visual impairment" you are passing the blame. But the job of a website team - the thing they are paid for - is to provide information that's accessible to the target audience. It's not my job to read that information. I'm probably not getting paid to read the website. And bad contrast choices aren't just hard to read for people with visual impairment. They're hard to read for someone on a different monitor or in different lighting. > You don't demand that japanese webpages offer klingon translations when they only wish to reach a japanese audience simply because they're excluding those poor soles who prefer to read klingon, do you? You started by saying this was not about choosing to exclude people but here you clearly show that someone has made the choice to exclude a group. The difference being that it is fine to exclude speakers of a made up language; it's not acceptable to exclude disabled people.

sukilot 12y ago
Websites aren't published in braille either. As long ad the site content is compatible with standard assistive tech in the client software, it is fine.
- zaphar 12y ago
  This is hardly the same comparisone since it's not possible to publish them in braille on a monitor. And publishing a picture of the braille letters wouldn't even help since the blind person still couldn't read them. Braille users are able to read text using a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refreshable_braille_display http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refreshable_braille_display but that's not the same thing as a monitor. Using grey text on grey backgrounds is much more similar to publishing all your text in images which makes is inaccessible to the blind person unless they install OCR software. But hey that's cool it's on them anyway right?

userbinator 12y ago

Using such high-contrast fonts hurts my eyes and thus excludes me from enjoying it as much. Your eyes and monitor may benefit from lowering the contrast/brightness. Most monitors seem to come set by default to maximum or near-maximum eye-watering brightness and contrast, which is great for in-store displays in an environment containing lots of other high-brightness lighting, but horrible for actual use. Turn it down so that black on white is comfortable to view. It's far more likely someone chose low-contrast because they wished to help visitors eyes or for aesthetic purposes It makes me wonder if those who use low-contrast designs are the same ones who have their monitors at such extreme settings that they have to compensate by reducing it on their pages, thus making it unreadable to those with their monitors set to comfortably reproduce black on white.

vacri 12y ago

Being able to read a webpage is not a universal right. So you oppose consciousness-raising of an issue, to make people aware of it? You oppose "Hey designers, here are some issues to think of"? It's perfectly reasonable to expect a user of the webpage to make it usable for themselves The solutions you offer are sledgehammers. Better to just be a good designer who is inclusive, than demand users monochrome their entire operating system just to read your site. I mean, that's even worse than "This page is best viewed in Browser X".