Re: [WSG] Visited Links and Accessibility
Thanks for mentioning the colour blind Dwain, blue colour blindness is the rarest form. 8% of adult males have some form of color blindness. http://www.hereticpress.com/Dogstar/Access/index.html#colourblind Tim On 11/01/2007, at 6:39 PM, Dwain Alford wrote: So, not sure what the best way is, but, I myself, tend to go with a lighter shade of the non-visited. Just do something! :) for accessibility purposes in using color (on links and visited links, etc.) i would recommend using the color contrast analyzer from http://www.accessibleinfo.org.au/ since web sites need to be accessible to everyone, don't forget the color blind, so make sure your colors work for them not just those with normal color vision. dwain *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** The Editor Heretic Press http://www.hereticpress.com Email [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Visited Links and Accessibility
Quoth Dwain Alford at 01/11/07 18:09... for accessibility purposes in using color (on links and visited links, etc.) i would recommend using the color contrast analyzer from http://www.accessibleinfo.org.au/ http://www.accessibleinfo.org.au/ since web sites need to be accessible to everyone, don't forget the color blind, so make sure your colors work for them not just those with normal color vision. I find excessive colours distracting and confess that I am guilty of displaying visited and unvisited links the same, and only changing on focus/hover. With the colour blindness issue taken into consideration as well, would it not be better, therefore, to style visited links in a manner where colour is not involved at all? Not being a CSS guru, I would need to check what options are available, but something like a line over and under the word for visited links may be a possibility. Cheers M -- Matthew Smith IT Consultancy Web Application Development Business: http://www.kbc.net.au/ Personal: http://www.smiffysplace.com/ LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/smiffy *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
RE: [WSG] Visited Links and Accessibility
Apologies, my reply was to Matthew, not Dwain. Frank -Original Message- From: listdad@webstandardsgroup.org [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Matthew Smith Sent: Thursday, 11 January, 2007 10:18 AM To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: Re: [WSG] Visited Links and Accessibility Quoth Dwain Alford at 01/11/07 18:09... for accessibility purposes in using color (on links and visited links, etc.) i would recommend using the color contrast analyzer from http://www.accessibleinfo.org.au/ http://www.accessibleinfo.org.au/ since web sites need to be accessible to everyone, don't forget the color blind, so make sure your colors work for them not just those with normal color vision. I find excessive colours distracting and confess that I am guilty of displaying visited and unvisited links the same, and only changing on focus/hover. With the colour blindness issue taken into consideration as well, would it not be better, therefore, to style visited links in a manner where colour is not involved at all? Not being a CSS guru, I would need to check what options are available, but something like a line over and under the word for visited links may be a possibility. Cheers M -- Matthew Smith IT Consultancy Web Application Development Business: http://www.kbc.net.au/ Personal: http://www.smiffysplace.com/ LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/smiffy *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Visited Links and Accessibility
for accessibility purposes in using color (on links and visited links, etc.) i would recommend using the color contrast analyzer fromhttp://www.accessibleinfo.org.au/ This is now at: http://www.visionaustralia.org.au/info.aspx?page=628 Andrew Maben 109b SE 4th Av Gainesville FL 32601 Ph: 352-384-9127 Cell: 352-870-6661 http://www.andrewmaben.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] In a well designed user interface, the user should not need instructions. *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
[WSG] Visited Links and Accessibility
I'm not entirely sure if this query falls under the scope of this group, apologies for that. One of the points in accessibility checks is that information conveyed using colour is also conveyed without. The most common way of doing visited links is to have them be a slightly different colour. It's my opinion that in a purely visual sense (because I don't know how screen readers announce visited links) this approach is inaccessible. What are your accessible methods of styling visited links? I'd imagine there'll be some votes for bold/normal, underline/normal. Is total inversion of background and foreground colour accessible? You can use fancy checkbox images (but obviously requires images which raises another issue) you can use :before or :after and content to add a unicode tick to any visited links (requires that your browser supports the pseudo-classes). Some people might not even bother styling visited links. There's a more to this than i'd previously thought and it'd be great to get some opinions. - Andrew Ingram *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
RE: [WSG] Visited Links and Accessibility
-Original Message- From: listdad@webstandardsgroup.org [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Andrew Ingram Sent: Wednesday, January 10, 2007 3:26 PM To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: [WSG] Visited Links and Accessibility I'm not entirely sure if this query falls under the scope of this group, apologies for that. One of the points in accessibility checks is that information conveyed using colour is also conveyed without. The most common way of doing visited links is to have them be a slightly different colour. It's my opinion that in a purely visual sense (because I don't know how screen readers announce visited links) this approach is inaccessible. Roberto Scano: Visited link is a status that can be notified to the user via API. The problem is for the color-blindness people that don't use assistive technologies, IMHO. *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
RE: [WSG] Visited Links and Accessibility
I read quite an interesting conversation on a similar topic recently (was it here? I'm not sure.) One of the main things that came out was that in some circumstances a visited link should be downplayed - no need to go there again, whereas in other cases they should be played-up - to emphasise regularly used links. The difference between the two will tend to vary according to the nature of the site, but also by the nature of the user. What this all means, is that you do need to be careful that link schemes are not too radical, regardless of the context. A little used method is to attach suitable icons, though suitable images are hard to think of, and tend to run counter to what you were asking for initially! Mike -Original Message- From: listdad@webstandardsgroup.org [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Andrew Ingram Sent: Wednesday, January 10, 2007 2:26 PM To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: [WSG] Visited Links and Accessibility I'm not entirely sure if this query falls under the scope of this group, apologies for that. One of the points in accessibility checks is that information conveyed using colour is also conveyed without. The most common way of doing visited links is to have them be a slightly different colour. It's my opinion that in a purely visual sense (because I don't know how screen readers announce visited links) this approach is inaccessible. What are your accessible methods of styling visited links? I'd imagine there'll be some votes for bold/normal, underline/normal. Is total inversion of background and foreground colour accessible? You can use fancy checkbox images (but obviously requires images which raises another issue) you can use :before or :after and content to add a unicode tick to any visited links (requires that your browser supports the pseudo-classes). Some people might not even bother styling visited links. There's a more to this than i'd previously thought and it'd be great to get some opinions. - Andrew Ingram *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Visited Links and Accessibility
Quoting Andrew Ingram [EMAIL PROTECTED]: One of the points in accessibility checks is that information conveyed using colour is also conveyed without. The most common way of doing visited links is to have them be a slightly different colour. It's my opinion that in a purely visual sense (because I don't know how screen readers announce visited links) this approach is inaccessible. Screen readers would normally announce whether a link is link or visited link (at least I recall my old version of JAWS doing so). I'd tend to agree in principle, but I would suggest that, unless a site is monstrously large and uses cryptic link text that differs from page to page, it wouldn't be a complete accessibility hurdle for a user if they didn't perceive the difference between visited/non-visited links. It's more of a nice usability feature than an accessibility one...though, if your design allows for it, it's certainly something that you could look at working around, going the extra mile to accommodate users with colour blindness or similar. I'd imagine there'll be some votes for bold/normal problem here is that, if these links are part of the main page content, inline in a paragraph for instance, the change from bold to normal may trigger some content reflow as the link gets activated. If it's an in-page link, this will be even more visible (as the bold link text is switched to normal, it takes up less space, so the rest of the paragraph and following content butt up to fill the space). underline/normal Shouldn't really remove the underline if, again, the link is part of a para of text or similar inversion of background and foreground colour accessible? That could work, but might look a bit heavy-handed. fancy checkbox images (but obviously requires images which raises another issue) Not for colour blindness. As mentioned above, screen readers would cope fine on their own either way. So, the only potential issue is the usual css on/images off scenario which, frankly, I have got little time for (if power users decide to go for that, then they should expect their experience to be slightly different and some possible usability features lost) P -- Patrick H. Lauke __ re·dux (adj.): brought back; returned. used postpositively [latin : re-, re- + dux, leader; see duke.] www.splintered.co.uk | www.photographia.co.uk http://redux.deviantart.com __ Web Standards Project (WaSP) Accessibility Task Force http://webstandards.org/ __ *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Visited Links and Accessibility
Barney Carroll wrote: I like the tick idea a lot. You should look at PPK's unusual but very clever system for attaching info to links [http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/index.html] - he does a similar thing, only without express use of :after. Regards, Barney I like this approach too, but it doesn't work if background images are disabled. It seems to address the other issues though. - Andrew *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Visited Links and Accessibility
One of the points in accessibility checks is that information conveyed using colour is also conveyed without. The most common way of doing visited links is to have them be a slightly different colour. It's my opinion that in a purely visual sense (because I don't know how screen readers announce visited links) this approach is inaccessible. Its become a major pet peeve of mine that people are not styling visited links at all, many times, now-a-days. I give as an example a recent page I was looking at of Google's. http://mail.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?topic=1555 In the old days the browser would automatically tell you what was visited or not. Now, with css many times people aren't including them and so very aggravating. I find that visited information crucially helpful when visiting a site, especially something like my example, above. So, not sure what the best way is, but, I myself, tend to go with a lighter shade of the non-visited. Just do something! :) cheers Donna -- Donna Jones Portland, Maine 207 772 0266 www.westendwebs.com *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
Re: [WSG] Visited Links and Accessibility
Well said. I recently seen this for myself browsing through my own site. I had a menu of related links which didn't have the cue point of color for visited and didn't show the link to the page one was on, I found myself losing track of where I had been, and that was on my own site! So yes, visited links indicators should be revisited / restored. Bruce Prochnau bkdesign solutions - Original Message - From: Donna Jones [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Sent: Wednesday, January 10, 2007 10:43 PM Subject: Re: [WSG] Visited Links and Accessibility One of the points in accessibility checks is that information conveyed using colour is also conveyed without. The most common way of doing visited links is to have them be a slightly different colour. It's my opinion that in a purely visual sense (because I don't know how screen readers announce visited links) this approach is inaccessible. Its become a major pet peeve of mine that people are not styling visited links at all, many times, now-a-days. I give as an example a recent page I was looking at of Google's. http://mail.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?topic=1555 In the old days the browser would automatically tell you what was visited or not. Now, with css many times people aren't including them and so very aggravating. I find that visited information crucially helpful when visiting a site, especially something like my example, above. So, not sure what the best way is, but, I myself, tend to go with a lighter shade of the non-visited. Just do something! :) cheers Donna -- Donna Jones Portland, Maine 207 772 0266 www.westendwebs.com *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** *** List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***
