Color Blindness and Accessibility
Often enough, people who are color blind get overlooked when testing a design for accessibility. Today at work, I read up on color blindness and how it effects web design. In the process, I discovered a neat website called Vischeck which will simulate the different kinds of colorblindness (to some extent).
Another issue I had previously disregarded was the labeling of links within a paragraph or similar content area. Sometimes (actually, most of the time) a color indicator isnt enough to set a link apart from the rest of the text. FEMA is certainly guilty of this, and several of you as well.
Ill give Eli a break since the underline appears when the mouse is focused on the content which takes up most of the document space (although if you navigate using a keyboard, focus is not given to the space and the underline does not appear). Brian, Im sorry, but your website gives me a headache to think about (think of this as getting off easy). My design has its own flaws, but being able to identify problems is a step closer to the solution.
Dont mind me for picking, its just an interesting new thing I picked up at work.
seele :: Jan.31.2005 :: General, Usability, Work :: 6 Comments »
The text of my anchors within paragraphs isn’t supposed to detract from the content. In fact, I rarely link things anymore. I probably should look at bolding or italicising links, however.
Also, your text is dark grey on black, which is difficult for me to read. You may want to lighten that.
Links dont need to take away from content, but should be noticable enough for the user to notice there is a link.
I agree, my links are too dark. Ill change that tonight.
Regarding Color of Links and Accessibiltiy
Seele makes a good point about the color of links or color in general on websites.
[…] nes Filed under: General — lowmagnet Seele, a web designer by profession, mentioned that contrast between links and normal text on my web page isn’t enough, but my underl […]
I ran the Vischeck thing on my site and all it did was make my logo graphic at the top of the page disappear. I guess color blind people would think my logo is ugly? ;) I’m pleased that you didn’t find a problem with my link design though *braces for the barage of suggestions to fix things I’m doing wrong* ;p