Persephone’s Box writes:
You have a fancy-pants blog with white writing, or sometimes red or blue on a black background. And you write brilliantly, poignantly even, and have many ideas I’d like to discuss.
This is your notification that I can’t read your blog.
My eyes are weak, I’m night blind, and for some reason I really can’t see white on a black background.
Blue already linked to this, but I wanted to echo it, because I can’t read light text on dark backgrounds either.
For other folks who have this same problem, you can instantly change any blog’s colors to black text on white screen by using the “zap colors” bookmarklet in Firefox or IE, or using control-G in Opera. But in my opinion, dark text on a light-colored background is better design than forcing weak-eyed readers like me to install a color zapper.
UPDATE: See also this Firefox plug-in, which disables not only colors but virtually all formatting.
On a related note, I sometimes work with elderly people and they have reported back that they find it difficult to read red and orange writing. I’m not sure why, but apparently dark orange text very similar to Alas’s text are harder for some senior people to read than other colors. After the third person told me about this phenomenon I reprinted the brochure that spurred the complaints.
There’s not a lot of studies of accessibility of typography or page design. It’s mostly seat-of-your-pants.
My blog is dark text on a tan background, and I chose it specifically because it doesn’t bother my eyes. Black text on a white background starts to make me feel burnt out after a while. Too much glare. I experimented with readability and strain and found one that felt comfortable for someone over forty.
But I have one reader who finds my blog causes eyestrain and wishes the contrast was more stark.
Red text on a black background brings back fond memories of APL for me.
Seriously, though–in IE you can get black text on a white background by using: Tools–Options–Accessibility–Ignore colors
*APL–a really obsolete numerical–as in, was obsolete in 1975–programming language in which I worked at one time.
Sam, that’s not a good solution for someone who just wants to turn off the formatting on a single difficult-to-read webpage, but would still like to see the intended colors for other websites.
Deborah, I like your blog’s colors. And I agree with you that black-on-white isn’t ideal either; like you, I think a light-but-not-white background color is easier on the eyes.