What does accessibility really mean?

Aisling said:

I prefer light text on dark background, and I don’t mind anything anywhere else. Just as long as text is readable. I can do HIGH CONTRAST! white on black very well, but the black on white drives me crazy.

Amber said:

Hey, you remembered my pet peeve! And it truly is too — while there have been many pretty designs with light text on a dark background I can’t appreciate them because it’s so hard to focus. (Imagine it when I spend hours on Snark, squinting my eyes. :P)

You can’t make your website accessible for everyone, unfortunately, because we’re all so fickle with our needs!

Kaylee said:

I’m really cool with anything; barely contrasting, tiny text is still readable for me :/

Kycoo said:

I’m okay with either light text on a dark background (as long as the text isn’t blinding white) or dark text on a light background. What really annoys me is when the text and the background are almost the same color, like light grey on white or something.

Cassie said:

I think the one thing that annoys me the most is confusing navigation - if you want a visitor at your site, then make it easy to for them to get around.
And I have appalling eyesight so lets make it easy to read. Colour schemes don’t bother me (unless they clash hideously) just so long as I can actually read what it is you’re wanting me to read!

Lil said:

This is where Web 2.0 sneaks right in and teaches you of user customisation and contribution, thus eliminating the finer details of user defined access

I don’t actually have any requirements for a website. A line height that doesn’t have text running on top of itself and a font size that can be resized should it be too tiny is just fine. Everything else is superfluous since I don’t have any disruptive motor functions or cognitive difficulties and I wear glasses to correct my vision. Cassie is right as well - mystery meat navigation gets really old fast.

Kristina said:

It’s become almost second nature for me to highlight text if it’s light on a dark background. It depends on how great the difference is between the colours is.

I like navigation that dosn’t move or wiggle when I mouseover it, a decent size text and not too many luminous colours flashing in my face. That’s basically it.

Matt Wilcox said:

Accessibility is a goal, but one that can never be achieved perfectly for everyone. If only because parts of it are mutually exclusive. And because some things there just isn’t the technology to do it with. And because the whole thing is a sliding scale and not a set target. There’s no such thing as ‘an accessible site’ there are only sites that are accessible to larger or smaller groups of people, comparatively.

Accessibility to me means that you’ve considered your audience and you do the things for them that make your content as easy to find and use as possible. It’s about knowing your audience, not about pandering to every minority out there. Which is not as harsh as it sounds.

There are basic things you can do that allow your content to be always navigable and viewable by everyone that can themselves use a browser; use CSS, write your HTML properly, make sure it all makes sense with CSS off, and for links when read out of context. But should you be providing ten style sheets for ten different types of accessibility target-group (high contrast, low contrast, light on dark, dark on light, partially sites, colour blind…etc…)? I argue no, unless your audience has a non-negligable number of such people. The extra effort might be OK on a personal site, but in the paying client world, it’s not financially viable to go so far. As long as they can turn off CSS and have the site work, they can customize the rest of the display themselves.

Accessibility is about knowing your audience, and offering an experience that works well for them, or as well as reasonably practicable. It’s not about meeting automated test criteria.