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Re: 1.4.1 use of color for state indicator

for

From: Mallory
Date: Mar 10, 2020 6:34AM

Some thoughts:

Use of Color claims to be a sub-set of "forms of perception" (esp under 1.3.3 which unfortunately strictly limits itself mostly to textual instructions, when in real life designers have been relying on visual recognition/intuition to self-explain how a lot of content and interactives work, for years), so I would not include things like borders, outlines, symbols, etc. I would even wager the "reasonable man" would not either.

Perhaps naïve, but it seems easy to take Use of Color and read it to mean "color" and not "vision"; stretching it to such seems disingenuous. Again, whether that's hue or luminosity or Toilet Duck aside. While people can argue on hue vs luminosity, taking it to borders and symbols just seems a bit silly when you take a step back. Ask 100 people what "colour" means and while you're sure to get a variety of answers, borders/outlines/images are very unlikely to be in that.

"but everything is technically nothing more than coloured pixels on a screen" would not be a useful degradation of terms. That we must cross half of a distance to somewhere in order to reach it, infinitely, and thus technically can never reach any destination is another example of not being useful. People reach destinations. People who can see, don't always see colour. If my user stylesheet changes more than colour, then it's outside this SC anyway, isn't it?

If I have *no* vision, I have assistive technology to access the text-based alternative (if that's what there is), but the Use of Color seems to me directly to people who DO have vision, use their vision, and rely on their vision; and because relying on colour is something devs and designers seem to specifically do a lot AND apparently forget about AND need a dedicated SC shoved in their faces to stop relying on colour alone to convey info.

I wonder if that legal term "reasonable man" can be a part of at least higher level readings of the future WCAG 3? It would of course be discarded for those who need to go further in depth because they are developing, or writing tests, or whatever.

still foaming a bit,
_mallory

On Mon, Mar 9, 2020, at 6:32 PM, Patrick H. Lauke wrote:
...
> If you go down the WHCM/custom stylesheet route, though, ANY kind of
> visual distinction (even without color - whether you take it as "hue
> only" or the stricter "hue and luminance") such as borders, extra
> outlines, CSS-generated symbols, etc will potentially/usually fall by
> the wayside. And then the SC really becomes "you must denote this in
> pure HTML text". Which is not what the intention of the SC was. But
> agree that this is where we have the "WCAG vs actual real-life
> accessibility for all users" tension, as usual.
>
> P
> --
> Patrick H. Lauke
>
> https://www.splintered.co.uk/ | https://github.com/patrickhlauke
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> twitter: @patrick_h_lauke | skype: patrick_h_lauke
>