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Thread: High-contrast icons

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Number of posts in this thread: 5 (In chronological order)

From: Janna Cameron
Date: Mon, Jan 29 2007 11:10AM
Subject: High-contrast icons
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I've noticed that the high-contrast version of many websites/web
applications is text-only. Is there a reason, beyond "time and effort",
why this is the case? Why don't high-contrast websites have
high-contrast icons?

Janna

From: Patrick H. Lauke
Date: Mon, Jan 29 2007 2:10PM
Subject: Re: High-contrast icons
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Janna Cameron wrote:
> I've noticed that the high-contrast version of many websites/web
> applications is text-only. Is there a reason, beyond "time and effort",
> why this is the case? Why don't high-contrast websites have
> high-contrast icons?

Partly because of that, and probably partly because there's still the
stigma of "accessible site = text only site" that lumps any disability
into one big group and serves them nothing but text...IMHO, of course.

P
--
Patrick H. Lauke

From: Janna Cameron
Date: Tue, Jan 30 2007 9:10AM
Subject: Re: High-contrast icons
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Just to be sure: Is there assistive technology that eliminates the need
to specially-design icons? (what contrast ratio would this technology
deliver?)

What size should high-contrast icons be? Would it be acceptable to make
the icons look in proportion with 40 or 60 px font?

Janna

-----Original Message-----
From: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
[mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = ] On Behalf Of Patrick H.
Lauke
Sent: Monday, January 29, 2007 4:07 PM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] High-contrast icons

Janna Cameron wrote:
> I've noticed that the high-contrast version of many websites/web
> applications is text-only. Is there a reason, beyond "time and
effort",
> why this is the case? Why don't high-contrast websites have
> high-contrast icons?

Partly because of that, and probably partly because there's still the
stigma of "accessible site = text only site" that lumps any disability
into one big group and serves them nothing but text...IMHO, of course.

P
--
Patrick H. Lauke

From: Emma Duke-Williams
Date: Tue, Jan 30 2007 9:40AM
Subject: Re: High-contrast icons
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Given that IE 7 now lets you expand text and images to the size that
you like them best - rather than just the text; I'd be inclined to
start to think about icons that are easily scalable (e.g. svg) - and
concentrate far more on clarity of icons.
The biggest problem with icons for meaning is that people don't know
what they mean.
E.g. a door.
On some interfaces (esp. eLearning and/ or children) a door often means "exit".
However, if you're playing an adventure type game, then a door is
often an invitation to explore...

I'd therefore think far more about what you are trying to convey with
the icons, than how to make them high contrast. A good icon, in
anycase, should, I feel, be very simple - and you should be picking
contrasting colours anyway.
Have you seen any of the work done with rebus Symbols for those who
have difficulty reading?
See for example:
http://www.widget.co.uk - used a lot in the UK.
http://www.askability.org.uk/ (using the Widget symbols).
http://www.mayer-johnson.com/ - used a lot in the US.

Emma


On 1/30/07, Janna Cameron < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
>
> Just to be sure: Is there assistive technology that eliminates the need
> to specially-design icons? (what contrast ratio would this technology
> deliver?)
>
> What size should high-contrast icons be? Would it be acceptable to make
> the icons look in proportion with 40 or 60 px font?
>
> Janna



--
Blog: http://www.tech.port.ac.uk/staffweb/duke-wie/blog/

From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Tue, Jan 30 2007 11:00AM
Subject: Re: High-contrast icons
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On Tue, 30 Jan 2007, Emma Duke-Williams wrote:

> Given that IE 7 now lets you expand text and images to the size that
> you like them best - rather than just the text;

Which behavior are you referring to? Zooming isn't really revolutionary.
It's part of its _problem_ that it resizes everything. If you zoom to,
say, 400% on a typical web page, you'll see just a small fraction of it
both horizontally and vertically.

> I'd be inclined to
> start to think about icons that are easily scalable (e.g. svg)

On modern browsers, rescaling of bitmap images works sufficiently well. I
mean it works so well that many other factors are more important to
accessibility than scaling quality. By the way, SVG does not really work
as the format of embedded images on web pages. Some day in the 2010s this
may change...

> - and concentrate far more on clarity of icons.

Well, that's surely important in any case.

> The biggest problem with icons for meaning is that people don't know
> what they mean.
> E.g. a door.

Indeed. Icons are seldom self-evident. A very common icon on web pages is
a mail box icon, which presents a type of box for mail delivery in the
United States. Admittedly many people recognize it from Donald Duck and
other art, but it still stands for _mail_ in the form of letters in
envelopes and small parcels. It is grossly wrong to use it as an icon for
so called electronic mail, or e-mail, which is actually a fully
computerized form of communication and quite often an _alternative_ to
sending a letter by mail. People have learned to associate the US mailbox
with Internet e-mail, but this means that every day, thousands of new
Internet users around the world will have to face this enigma, quite
pointlessly.

Less common associations are of course even more problematic. I think the
bottom line is that for the most of it, icons should only be used
a) in conjunction with verbal expressions, not instead of them, and
b) when they are natural and intuitively understandable to the intended
audience - including people who are slow in learning, or keep forgetting
things, or have problems in recognizing visual shapes - as opposite to the
designer gang who loves to find icons for everything.

--
Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/