Question

I am new to style sheets and Section 508.I am trying to understand it.

As i understand, style sheets provide some specific set of details on how to display a web page. For example, it can mention color, font and size to be used for all elements/specific elements in a page.

One of the criteria in section 508 states that, we should not override user specific settings of font, color and contrast they may make at OS or browser level. In this case, how should we go about respecting this? The idea of having a style sheets is to have a unique, more impressive and usable style of our own. So we will have our own set of font, color etc., in our style sheets.

If this criteria is to be met, we should not override any font/color/contrast in our UI which is a bit contradictory to one of the ideas of using style sheets. Isnt it? So should we provide another style sheet which uses high-contrast details which is also our own set of fonts, colors etc., or provide an option to use our UI without style sheets? Please advice.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Style sheets themselves (or at least CSS) already provide a suitable mechanism for this: User style sheets. A user can set any styles within his user agent, which, if suffixed with the !important rule, override the author’s definitions.

Furthermore, regarding fonts, authors can specify font families which are user-specified. Those are, among others, serif, sanf-serif and monospace.

You can also use the system colors to specify foreground and background colors of elements to ensure contrast, such as

background-color: Window;
color: WindowText;

This would ensure legibility and use of the system-defined colors.