Re: textured backgrounds

Larry Jackson (jackson@ncsa.uiuc.edu)
Wed, 18 Jan 95 09:44:05 EST

..from Dave Morris:

>As a user, I don't want every tom dick and jane fooling with my desktop
>at this level. Browser publishers should be encouraged to work on
>the human factors of their rendering and provide alternatives in
>easy to configure ways. I don't believe everything we can do yields
>good end-user usablity.
>
>But if it is going to be done, the html representation must discourage
>use which will be disrruptive to the ultimate user. Perhaps a style
>attribute associated with <body> and table (?<tb>) as these are 'atomic'
>entities from the perception of the user.

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I'd like to second the motion. Textured backgrounds needs to be something
that the user can shut _off_.

Summarizing some discussions we had off-line last fall re: access by the
disabled, adding texture to backgrounds makes it more diffiuclt for people
with certain visual acuity problems to discern the foreground material.
Also, certain kiinds of screen-reader software can be confused by texture,
interpreting it as a graphic and ignoring what's "inside", i.e., the
foreground text.

And, as somebody just pointed out on this list, there are unique problems
encountered by people with differing kinds of "color blindness".

==========

Larry Jackson