Dear Web Page Provider,
My enjoyment of your web page is considerably diminished by a small oversight on your part. Let me explain:
In common with many people with a vision impairment I prefer to have a dark computer screen with light text, links etc. In my case I have configured my Netscape browser to give me yellow text on a dark red background, white links and blue followed links. I have also used these colours on my web page. If you think they sound bizarre do look at
http://ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au/~heyes
Using my set 'default' colours I am able to surf the web and look at every other page. But it is boring to have them all come up in MY colours. I would like to look at other peoples' choices and thereby to get ideas for interesting visual displays.
UNFORTUNATELY there is a tendency for people to set their web page background but to FAIL TO SET the other colour attributes. This may look perfectly OK to them but it is hell for me! For example: if you set your background to a nice ivory and I choose to look at your page using YOUR colours, Netscape gives me YOUR ivory but MY yellow text, white links etc.!
My request, indeed my appeal, is that anyone who sets ANY colour attribute should set ALL the colour attributes.
My string is:
BODY BGCOLOR="#20000" TEXT="#F0F000" LINK="#FFFFFF" VLINK="#00FFFF" ALINK="#606090"
Please let us all enjoy your page by setting all FIVE attributes to your chosen colours. I am NOT suggesting you use my colours. I would love to look at YOUR choices but, if you do not set ALL your attributes I get a horrible mixture of yours and mine!
Thank you.
PS. I have sent this page to quite a number of people now. I am delighted to report that:
a) people seem not to have difficulty in understanding what I am on about
(to use a grammatical construction made famous by the Beatles)
b) a significant number of web pages have been altered
c) a number of web page providers have actually thanked me for my
constructive criticism.