Re: colors and backgrounds for web pages
- From: "John Greer" <jpgreer17@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2007 19:53:50 -0500
Here is a much better article about it all.
http://coe.sdsu.edu/eet/Articles/colormood/index.htm
JohnPG search for all of your Jaws scripts at http://www.blindcrawler.com/
Also be sure to check out Blind Crawler's Legend of the Green Dragon server at
http://www.blindcrawler.com/lotg/
There will be more to come from Blind Crawler very soon.
Administrator: John Greer
Blind Crawler.com
----- Original Message -----
From: John Greer
To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Monday, October 29, 2007 7:38 PM
Subject: Re: colors and backgrounds for web pages
Here is a small article I have found to tell a bit of what I have been going
on about.
http://www.pageresource.com/zine/webcolors.htm
JohnPG search for all of your Jaws scripts at http://www.blindcrawler.com/
Also be sure to check out Blind Crawler's Legend of the Green Dragon server
at http://www.blindcrawler.com/lotg/
There will be more to come from Blind Crawler very soon.
Administrator: John Greer
Blind Crawler.com
----- Original Message -----
From: dusty bray
To: programmingblind@freelistsorg
Sent: Monday, October 29, 2007 7:28 PM
Subject: RE: colors and backgrounds for web pages
Yeah, i do agree with what you're saying: you shouldn't try to take the
art out of designing anything. Even sighted people ask opinions on their work.
The only thing i was trying to say is that i think it would be good if the
blind community had a descent model just as a starting point. Even sighted
people who design documents professionally go by such models. As a programmer,
i can't help but think quantitatively. smile
Several of you suggested your own simple models (this color usually goes
with this color, etc.). Aside from artistic preferences, these choices are
mostly based on physical causes (some color combinations are actually
irritating to the eyes). But i think there could be value in something more
detailed that can be used as a standard reference, not a cure-all. Of course,
the algorithm shouldn't take into consideration all aspects of the CSS, such as
images, only those aspects that could be easily quantified, such as background
versus foreground combinations or font choice. Such a model might help totally
blind users to relate concrete metrics to otherwise arbitrary, visual concepts.
dusty.......
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: jpgreer17@xxxxxxxxxxx
To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: colors and backgrounds for web pages
Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2007 18:37:12 -0500
Agreed, the problem here is as I have said there is no one set in stone
method of choosing colors. I believe a misconception of css is that because it
is put into a style sheet that it is automatically a good choice if designed by
a sighted person. What a style sheet is is a way for a website to have the
same look throughout the website design. It is also used by screen readers as
a standard that they can check to get the layout of the page. It cannot
however tell you whether or not the colors chosen on a website are the correct
ones to appeal to a wider audience. An example of what I mean is, there are
also websites that have a static background image. Meaning that the picture of
the deer they have as a background picture does not scroll as a person is
scrolling through the text on the page. The text however does. This in effect
will cause the text to sometimes be on a brown backing, or a red backing, or
even a white backing. Because that reindeer picture does not move the person
designing the website has to make a good choice as far as text color so that it
is still readable in contrast to the picture used in the background. Although
it can be said that black text would work, the person also has to keep in mind,
is the text size too small if I scroll it here or there thus making it hard to
read? Yep there are times when even a person with perfect 20 20 vision can't
read a website simply because of the layout of a page. Much of the final
design on a website has to rely on user feedback. Is the site boring? Is the
site to hard to look at for long periods of time? I am sorry to say there is
no magic mathematical formula to tell you what will appeal to sighted users.
For that you do have to just rely on your user feedback. Yahoo for instance
with it's first design was fairly similar to google in its layout. It had its
logo with a few links on the main page. But as customer interest dropped they
redesigned their website to make it more visually appealing to the users they
had giving them feedback. It of course did not appeal to everyone, me for
instance. I feel now that Yahoo has become far to cluttered in its design and
it now takes away from its actual purpose, to be a search engine. Now even
visually you have to search around the page just to find the edit box to type
in a search.
JohnPG search for all of your Jaws scripts at http://www.blindcrawler.com/
Also be sure to check out Blind Crawler's Legend of the Green Dragon
server at http://www.blindcrawler.com/lotg/
There will be more to come from Blind Crawler very soon.
Administrator: John Greer
Blind Crawler.com
----- Original Message -----
From: tribble
To: programmingblind@freelistsorg
Sent: Monday, October 29, 2007 6:05 PM
Subject: Re: colors and backgrounds for web pages
Hi Dusty -- Well it is a novel approach, but it might be hard to draw
subjective information from a survey of style sheets on the net -- for example,
suppose a Christmas site contains a background image of raindeer on a snowy
landscape with bits of red and green to add color. Well, raindeer are light
brown and snow is white, so would the search engine conclude that white and
brown, the predominant colors, are Christmas colors?
Anyway, just a thought -- Perhaps I should go to your site and read
what you wrote...
Anyway, happy hacking.
--le
----- Original Message -----
From: dusty bray
To: programmingblind@freelistsorg
Sent: Monday, October 29, 2007 5:06 PM
Subject: RE: colors and backgrounds for web pages
Ya know, this is a another problem i've been wanting to address for a
while. Like Laura suggested, i believe CSS is the answer. The only problem is
selecting the correct CSS for the right mood / occasion.
i think i wrote about this plan on my website, and i'm curious if
this method would help: First, a Web crawler could scour the Internet for as
many style-sheets as it can find. Then a program could use some basic machine
learning to categorize them. The algorithm might even consider the content of
the pages which use the CSS. For instance, the language of a Web page could be
given a rating between "casual" and "professional". If certain color
combinations are used more frequently, we can assume these schemes are more
readable. After the style-sheets are categorized, the user could search for
the best scheme based on some criteria. For instance, a user may want a 90%
professional and 100% readable scheme. Or maybe the user wants a scheme for
Halloween or Christmas.
What do you all think? Too bad i never have time to implement half
the stuff i want to. i'd like to know if any of my ideas would actually help.
Hmmm...
dusty.......
> From: lupshaw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: colors and backgrounds for web pages
> Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2007 08:00:31 -0800
>
> Hi everyone,
>
> Sighted people are giving me a hard time because my web pages aren't
> breathing fires of colorful flames! *smile* Where can I go, or what
should
> I study to learn about colors and backgrounds for web pages? Also,
is this
> something that blind people can really do? Or, will I need lots of
sighted
> assistance?
>
> With All Respect,
> Upshaw, LaMar T
>
> __________
> View the list's information and change your settings at
> //www.freelists.org/list/programmingblind
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Boo! Scare away worms, viruses and so much more! Try Windows Live
OneCare! Try now!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Boo! Scare away worms, viruses and so much more! Try Windows Live OneCare!
Try now!
Other related posts:
