All OpenOffice.org Websites - why white text on light blue?

[harveyab]

Why was it chosen to put white text on very light blue headers at the top of all the OpenOffice.org web pages.
They are completely unreadable and in some places I didn't even know there was text until I highlighted it.
I can't be the only one seeing this. It is the same on my old Win 98 desktop and my newer Dell notebook with XP.
The light blue is nice. But white text?
For example go to:http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/
do Ctrl-A (in Windows) to highlight all text on the page and you find that at the top of the page it says in small letters:
"User community support forum for OpenOffice.org, StarOffice and NeoOffice" which is otherwise completely invisible.
And on the right "Advanced search" is nearly invisible.
Harvey
"This is the craziest world I ever lived in." (John William Bunting)

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Perhaps you have a hardware problem, or a colour-blindness problem. I am colour-blind and have less than perfect eyesight, but have no problem reading the white text, but there are different types of colour-blindness.

Ishihara Colour-blindness Tests

Otherwise, if it is a hardware problem, you either need to adjust the contrast or monitor gamma, or improve the lighting in your room. White on light blue is not the best choice of colours, but it is readable.

[acknak]

FWIW, I have a hard time reading it as well, especially the crazy widget at the top right of the OO.org site, which doesn't work well on top of being hard to read.

There are lots of sites around that will do a text color contrast readability analysis, e.g. http://gmazzocato.altervista.org/colorwheel/wheel.php or http://juicystudio.com/services/colourcontrast.php (~random Google hits).

Here's the result for the forum site description (#fff/#b4d2e3):

The difference in brightness between the two colours is not sufficient. The threshold is 125, and the result of the foreground and background colours is 52.

The difference in colour between the two colours is not sufficient. The threshold is 500, and the result of the foreground and background colours is 148.

So it's not even close to meeting the accessibility standard.

For the OO.org site (#bdd5f8/#9bc0f5), I get: b:32 (125) and c:83 (500): even worse.

The "Board Index" text below the forum banner is b:147 (125) and c:422 (500), so it's ok, but just barely.

[harveyab]

acknak,
Thank you.
I get tired of people who trivialize recommendations.
The tests you did make the case well.
Harvey

[ccornell]

The colors were selected by the OpenOffice.org community. It's all part of the ongoing community discussion on the dev@website.openoffice.org mailing list. They are working on improvements and tweaks all the time.

So... if the color contrasts are poor, join the mailing list, and voice your thoughts. Back it up by the usability tests. Show how it fails to work and why. Get involved in the discussion

You can find the project website here: http://website.openoffice.org/
and the mailing lists are here: http://website.openoffice.org/servlets/ ... ngListList