[Vit-discuss] Ruby-Lang Redesign Feedback Requested

[Hugh Sasse]

On Thu, 24 Aug 2006, John W. Long wrote:

> If you have a minute, zip on over to the new Web site and click around:
> 
> http://new.ruby-lang.org
> 

I've raised some of this before, but it was not on this list, so I hope
people will bear with the repetition.

I like the site in general, the layout is nice, and the choice of
colours is generally good.  

I'd like to see a couple of alternate stylesheets for people with
low vision. I've grabbed the existing stylesheets, and there is a
lot in there, and frankly I'm a bit lost as to what to patch. I
don't edit CSS stuff often enough to be fluent in it, so I apologize
for not providing patches.  Here's what I'd like to see if it's
feasible:

   The sidebars are blue on blue, which is too low contrast for me
   to read comfortably.  I'd suggest deep red, maybe going to a
   lighter red on hover.  The central code example on the main 
   page has this problem, but I'd definitely agree that picking a
   syntax highlight scheme that suits everyone is, well,
   "nontrivial" to say the least.

   The point about scaling with large print has already been made.

   The class="post-info" is clearly intended to be meta-information
   people don't really need to know, but can make the visual effort
   to get by reading the low contrast text.  In the low vision
   version(s?) I'd just keep that as the same contrast as the main
   text.

   There are people who find glare very painful.  Having a
   stylesheet with light text on a dark background for the main body
   of the text would be most welcome for them.

   Could the search box have a thicker border, because with the
   present white on cream with a thin border it's really only
   nocticeable because of the search button.

   Most of the fonts on the pages seem to be sans-serif. This is
   good for many forms of low vision, and dyslexic people have told
   me they like that style also.  Maybe the titles could be in such
   a font, but bigger and bold in the alternate stylesheets?

Sorry to bring up such a lot of detail but hopefully this need only
apply to the alternate style sheets, and thus needn't happen
yesterday ;-).  Anyway, I hope these are useful points, and won't be
considered as adverse criticism.  One can only deal with what one
knows, so having room for improvement for low vision users is
understandable; I have not attempted to address issues that would
affect those browsing with speech and braille, because I don't use
those modes of access.

        Thank you,
        Hugh