Generally speaking, contrast requirements should vary by size/weight. Unless it's larger text, you don't want any lighter than #333, but ideally the body text should always be #000 if it's on a light background. (If this causes eye strain it's usually a problem with the specific font, the monitor, or the font rendering of the system itself, and with lower-end monitors it's the lighter text that causes far more problems.)
Minimum font sizes should take into consideration different fonts, OSes, and screens, too. Consider an example of arial vs verdana: on my computer, arial becomes illegible under 10px, but verdana can often still be read down to 8px (and 8px verdana is apparently equivalent to 10px arial). On a windows 7, both become illegible under 10px, but render about the same at 10px.
This is a different problem from just size, however - on a standard screen, there simply aren't enough pixels to render the characters, and while the above were extreme examples, this is already an issue as large as 12px and higher (Vector uses 13px). While hinting and whatnot help to mitigate this, not all systems handle it the same way, or as well, some even completely failing on some fonts.
On the other hand, you often don't see this at all if you're using a high pixel density display because those do have sufficient pixels. But most users do not have access to those.
(Agree about the serif blocks - you get similar effects with serif fonts, and the effects there can be much more extreme.)
-I
On 20/02/14 19:11, Brandon Harris wrote:
Body text color #222222, no other text lighter than #555555. No serif font blocks. No font size smaller than 11 point.
On Feb 20, 2014, at 11:05 AM, Ryan Kaldari rkaldari@wikimedia.org wrote:
In the old days (2011), the WMF had design guidelines that discussed accessibility issues such as appropriate font sizes, use of colors, and text contrast. These guidelines were later replaced with the Agora guidelines (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Design) which specify only that "We must enable access for users with impairments."
Accessibility is central to our mission as an organization and very important to our community. In fact the en.wiki community has enacted their own comprehensive accessibility guidelines for content: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Accessibility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Accessibility_dos_and_don%27ts
Mediawiki developers also have a set of published accessibility guidelines: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Accessibility_guide_for_developers
The issue of accessibility in MediaWiki UX design has been raised numerous times in the recent past, most commonly in regard to font sizes and colors. I'm personally aware of it coming up at least 5 times in the past year (Typography Refresh, Flow, Echo, Mobile, NavPopups). Rather than rehashing the same discussions each time, I would encourage the design team to come up with a new set of accessibility guidelines that everyone can refer to and agree on. I would encourage stealing ideas from the en.wiki guidelines and the WCAG guidelines (http://www.w3.org/TR/UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20/). I would also suggest that the design team invest in a pair of scratched-up coke-bottle glasses that each design mock-up can be tested with :)
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Brandon Harris, Senior Designer, Wikimedia Foundation
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