Alternative Google Color Schemes

Following up on my earlier post about the lack of accessible Vista themes and my current feelings on standard internet color schemes, I posted the following to the accessible Google Group: Alternative Google Color Schemes - accessible | Google Groups

For the visually impaired, Google's (as well as MS and most websites) color scheme is downright bad. Does Google have or could it develop an alternative accessible co or scheme? Not only should it be high contrast, but also light-on-dark. For me, I like yellow-on-black. Firefox and IE allow users to impose color schemes while browsing, but this method changes all text and background to the same two colors. This ruins the full use of each page. For example, in Gmail, the star feature becomes useless.For another, regular text and hyperlinks become indistinguishable. So this solution is only partial. This remains true for other websites and for Windows as well. Both Vista and XP have high-contrast color schemes, but there are both aesthetically unappealing (Visually impaired does not equal aesthetically unaware) and more problematic then helpful. Is this something that Google could/will implement? Is this something a third-party could do well? There are some third party tools (e.g. Firefox's Accessibar), but none are subtle enough to retain the full nature of each web page. Is anyone up for the challenge? Thanks! PS Can someone create a nice Vista/XP theme with accessible and aesthetic colors and font sizes

I will relay any useful responses.

Zooming in the new IE

At first, I did not like the new Internet Explorer (IE). It buried the accessibility options I like most (text size and ignore colors specified on webpages). There is one new redeeming feature, the new zoom.

Zoom does what it says. Just like zooming in and out with your camera, zoom lets you magnify websites at any level of magnification you desire. I usually keep it between 125% and 200%, but it depends on the website. Very useful. Unlike text size, zoom works on all web pages. The only downside is that many pages will extend eve further off the right side of the screen. The solution for that has been to get a wide-screen monitor.

Zoom's official home is under the Pages menu right about my other favorite, text size.The excellent news is that there are two easier ways to access it. First, the bottom right corner of the IE window has a "change zoom level" drop down menu. Even better are the keyboard controls; Ctrl-+ to zoom in and Ctrl-- to zoom out.

Time to zoom away.

Inaccessible Web Design

This is what a bad website looks like after I have set the font sizes so that I can read them. This is from Audible.com.

[Audible]

Pogue’s Posts - As We Get Older, Type Gets Smaller - Technology - New York Times Blog

Pogue's post this past week, As We Get Older, Type Gets Smaller, addresses a major issue that I think about too much. I reset the screen resolution, override default fonts and sometimes use Zoomtext.

Font Size in Balloons

PC Magazine has a tip on dealing with Font Size in Balloons. This should help you resize the font in those little comment balloons in Word.

Let Users Control Font Size (Alertbox Aug. 2002)

Jakob Nielsen, a 'crusader' for web usability, wrote a plea,Let Users Control Font Size (Alertbox Aug. 2002), a few years ago. In this article, Nielsen articulates an idea that I have been percolating for a long time. From his column,

Consider adding a button that loads an alternate style sheet with really big font sizes if most of your site's visitors are senior citizens or low-vision users. Few users know how to find or use the built-in font size feature in current browsers, and adding such a button within your pages will help users easily increase text size.

I think that we need to expand upon this idea. Not only should every browser should come with a 'large print' style sheet and an easy-to-find button to load it, but every computer should have an easy-to-find icon on the desktop that will reset the Appearance setting to a larger font, higher contrast (but still visually appalling) setting. Computers at kiosks and in school computer labs and even ATM machines should be reuired to have these 'large print' icons.