I agree that our default link coloring could be improved. We could make better use of brighter shades of reds, blues, and oranges. Some other sites use green to further distinguish links b/t red and blue; though of course this would have less of an effect for people with g/r colorblindness.

At the very least, providing clean preferences for setting link colors -- offering a few discrete palettes rather than requiring people to futz with their CSS settings (and figure out how to do that) -- would be a simple change.

As to accessibility in general, I agree with rose that it is time for some groups to focus on usability and accessibility of the site. In addition to tools like Bobby, the National Center for Accessible Media [2] has some excellent references on making media, scientific works, and other educational materials accessible.

[1] http://www.watchfire.com/products/desktop/bobby/default.aspx [2] http://ncam.wgbh.org/ebooks/

On 6/25/05, rose.parks@att.net rose.parks@att.net wrote:

Hi, I don't agree with this remark in any way. I think that the "accessibility" of our site is quite important. By Section 508 of our accessibility laws, the U.S. government is not allowed to use non-accessible computer software, applications, etc. Further, I believe it is morally right that our site be accessible. If anything, I think it is time to review our site for accessibility. What could Jimbo mean by his oft-quoted statement:

Wikipedia is described by its founder Jimmy Wales as "an effort to create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language."[3] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia#endnote_WalesGoal)

if our site is not available to the millions of disabled in the U.S., not to mention the world. The W3 has complete guidelines on accessibility for web site designers to implement:

http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/

                 As Ever,

                      Ruth Ifcher

--

-------------- Original message ---------------------- From: Robin Shannon robin.shannon@gmail.com

...

G'day all,

Currently the colour of the normal link and the visited link are indistinguishable to the colourblind. This is a problem across all the sites we have. Sure this isnt really important, but are then any web designers who have faced this problem before who could suggest colours which could be distinguished by most colourblind ppl (since most colourblind ppl arent completely colourblind, just red-green colourblind). Apparently about 10 percent of ppl are colourblind

paz y amor, -rjs.

-- hit me: <robin.shannon.id.au> jab me: robin.shannon@jabber.org.au

upgrade to ubuntu linux: http://www.spreadubuntu.org/

+sj+ _ _ :-------.-.--------.--.--------.-.--------.--.--------[...]

rose.parks@att.net wrote:

I very rarely post to the wikimedia mailing lists, but this message caught my attention. It mentions something that I feel is very important. Robin Shannon <robin.shannon@gmail.com>

refers to the problem of distinguishing different types of links, which might be hard for the color blind. She says:

"Sure this isnt really important..."

I don't agree with this remark in any way. I think that the "accessibility" of our site is quite important. By Section 508 of our accessibility laws, the U.S. government is not allowed to use non-accessible computer software, applications, etc. Further, I believe it is morally right that our site be accessible.

I read that more as being not important not because we shouldn't care about color-blind people, but because it's not particularly important functionality. Being able to distinguish between visited and not-yet-visited links isn't necessary or even all that useful for "accessibility" of the site.

-Mark