[thelist] Origin of Winer Quote?

Ben Dyer ben_dyer at imaginuity.com
Tue May 8 09:23:17 CDT 2001


At 07:14 AM 5/8/2001, you wrote:
>Wayyyyyy back in '99. Dan has a screenshot I believe.
>
>
><tip inspiredBy="Ben Dyer">
>It's easy to forget about accessibility concerns. Don't.
>http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/WAI-WEBCONTENT-19990505/
></tip>

Wow, I'm touched. <sniffle> :)

<tip type="Accessibility">
The biggest mistake most sites make in accessibility (and the one that can 
be the easiest or the hardest to fix based on how you designed your site) 
is to be reliant on color in your design.  This is especially true in 
forms.  On required fields in error checking, don't exclusively rely on the 
color red to indicate mistakes and don't exclusively rely on other colors 
to indicate which fields are required in the first place.

Quick example: we had a client who wanted a real garish shade of yellow and 
on their forms, they wanted to mark required fields as blue, with no other 
distinguishing marks.  To show that this was a bad idea, I did a screen 
capture, brought it into Photoshop and desaturated the page.  The text was 
gone.  It was quite dramatic showing this to a client.  And, yes, I realize 
this doesn't accurately represent all, or even most, color blindness, but 
it was done to prove a point.  Be very, very careful when selecting your 
colors.
</tip>

--Ben



<!-----------------------
Ben Dyer
Senior Internet Developer
Imaginuity Interactive
http://www.imaginuity.com
//---------------------->






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