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When I worked for Lucent, our style guide required (at least) two areas of
difference from body text (color and font difference, such as underline)
specifically to address colorblindness issues. That works well for links.
For warnings, you should incorporate a graphic or glyph that's larger than
the other text that will stand out regardless of the color (red usually
prints as black when it's converted to B&W).
For online (HTML) viewing, I'd go with a graphic, and have the alt text be
"Danger!" or "Warning!" so that screen readers will pick it up, too.
-Wendy
On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 10:30 AM, Nancy Allison <maker -at- verizon -dot- net> wrote:
> Hi, all. Once more, with content!
>
> I've just done a search for "color blindness" and "online documentation"
> and come up with a terrific stc page (
>http://www.stcsig.org/usability/topics/colorblind.html, if you're
> interested). Clearly, I have a lot of reading to do.
>
> I thought it would also be interesting to see if any of you incorporate
> color blindness into your online documentation design (or print doc, for
> that matter).
>
> This topic came to mind because I was wishing there was a way to make
> Danger! warnings (the ones where you're trying to keep people from killing
> themselves or each other) really pop on the page, or online.
>
> Color is out for the PDFs because so many people print them in black and
> white, so the most glaring colors in the world would simply be reduced to
> *less-visible* greys.
>
> But online . . . just wondering if anyone else has gone down this route and
> what you decided.
>
> Thanks!
>
> --Nancy
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
> Free Software Documentation Project Web Cast: Covers developing Table of
> Contents, Context IDs, and Index, as well as Doc-To-Help
> 2009 tips, tricks, and best practices.
>http://www.doctohelp.com/SuperPages/Webcasts/
>
> Help & Manual 5: The complete help authoring tool for individual
> authors and teams. Professional power, intuitive interface. Write
> once, publish to 8 formats. Multi-user authoring and version control!
>http://www.helpandmanual.com/
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^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Free Software Documentation Project Web Cast: Covers developing Table of
Contents, Context IDs, and Index, as well as Doc-To-Help
2009 tips, tricks, and best practices. http://www.doctohelp.com/SuperPages/Webcasts/
Help & Manual 5: The complete help authoring tool for individual
authors and teams. Professional power, intuitive interface. Write
once, publish to 8 formats. Multi-user authoring and version control! http://www.helpandmanual.com/
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