WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

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Re: Color Contrast

for

From: S.R. Emerson, Accrete Web Solutions
Date: Jun 3, 2009 6:50PM

The Web Is Not Print
==========================="Understanding the difference between print and the web is important because
people won't read your content or spend money at your site if they can't use
it. If you're designing webpages with the same mindset you'd have for
designing a brochure, you likely have fewer customers or readers than you
could.

The science is there and the research has been done: people behave
differently online than they do when reading print, and as designers, we can
either facilitate use of our websites, or hinder it.

I've tried my damnedest to keep this summary opinion free, but I'll finish
with one personal observation: Our job titles have the word 'web' in them,
and if we're designing for the web as if we were designing for print, we're
not doing our jobs."
Reference: http://www.cactusflower.org/the-web-is-not-print/

Care With Font Size
==========================="Units: avoid absolute length units for screen display

Do not specify the font-size in pt, or other absolute length units for
screen stylesheets. They render inconsistently across platforms and can't be
resized by the User Agent (e.g browser). Keep the usage of such units for
styling on media with fixed and known physical properties (e.g print).

Use relative length units such as percent or (better) em

even better, if a base font-size is set for the document, use absolute size
([ xx-small | x-small | small | medium | large | x-large | xx-large ]) or
relative size ([ larger | smaller ]) when defining the font size for a
particular element within the document. "
Reference: http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/font-size

S. Emerson
Accrete Web Solutions
www.accretewebsolutions.ca