746205 - CSS issues render color selection in FF useless

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Disability Access, defect)

Description

[Bryen Yunashko]

Attachment: This is screenshot of opensuse.org with my custom settings

In FF, I have selected to make backgrounds black and fonts white because of my low vision and extreme sensitiviety to white  (which many websites seem to LOVE taht damn white background.)

Problem is that when I do this, oftentimes I will encounter websites that don't display their images.  See attached for comparision examples from opensuse.org.  But this is not exclusive to o.o.  Many other sites have this same problem.

I switch quite often in the preferences to revert to website's preferred colors and then squint like hell.   There's got to be a way to resolve this.  :-(  I can't imagine filing bugs against every website in the world with this problem.

This is a big problem when button images disappear.  Sometimes I'm lucky and can hover my mouse pointer across the entire screen until I see it turn into a finger.  (Tempted to give it a certain finger of my own when I do this!)

I'd like to have better understanding of this issue and how we can approach whether it involves a fix in FF or an education issue to websites.

Comment 1

[Bryen Yunashko]

Attachment: This is the normal view of the website when not using custom settings.

Comment 2

[Bryen Yunashko]

Attachment: This is my custom settings in Preferences > Content > Color

Comment 3

[Joseph Scheuhammer (:clown)]

Steps to reproduce:
1. Example site: http://www.opensuse.org/en/
2. In FF Preferences -> Content -> Fonts and Colors -> click the "Colors..." button.
2a. Change the text color to white
2b. Change the background color to black
2c. Uncheck the "Allow pages to choose their own colors, instead of my selection above" checkbox.

Result:
- text is white on a black background, but the images are all missing.

Bryen, can you confirm that this is reproduce the problem?
Note that the images disappear because they are background images, and the preferences have to set to force a black background.  FF is doing what it's been told to do.  This is not a FF bug per se, but an authoring error in the sense that information conveyed by the image only works in one user condition.

I wonder if it's possible to have a setting that (1) does the color switch, but (2) maintains the background images.  I'm not optimistic, but I could be wrong.

Comment 4

[Bryen Yunashko]

Clown,  Indeed those are the steps that reproduce the problem.

Comment 5

[Alice0775 White]

Maybe Bug 306625

Comment 6

[Bryen Yunashko]

@Alice

Definitely problems in the same area, although the OP there has a different goal than what my goal is.  Nevertheless, problem is with the same tool here.    Interesting to see this is such a long-standing issue.  I've only begun color control myself about 3 months ago.  

I do hope this will get some attention.  I'm curious about the "ubuntu" solution that is claimed in the last comment on that bug.   Looks like whatever Ubuntu did didn't get sent upstream?

Comment 7

[Joseph Scheuhammer (:clown)]

Attachment: CSS for overriding page colors, but keep background images.

(In reply to Joseph Scheuhammer from comment #3)
> ... 
> I wonder if it's possible to have a setting that (1) does the color switch,
> but (2) maintains the background images.  I'm not optimistic, but I could be
> wrong.

Replying to myself:  I've done a quick test with CSS, and discovered that it might be possible.  The attached CSS file does most of what Bryen wants.  I'll follow up with a screen shot.

I used Web Developer's "Add User Style Sheet..." to test it out (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/web-developer/). -- I'm not sure if there's a way within FF proper to apply a user-supplied style sheet.

Comment 8

[Joseph Scheuhammer (:clown)]

Attachment: Screen shot showing result of applying whiteOnBlackWithImages.css

Screenshot of how the OpenSuse page looks when the CSS in attachement 615834 is applied ("whiteOnBlackWithImages.css").

Comment 9

[Bryen Yunashko]

So does this mean its an authoring issue?   Scary thought as I can just see a bunch of obstinate webmasters out there refusing to make changes to be more accessible.  :-)

Comment 10

[Joseph Scheuhammer (:clown)]

(In reply to Bryen Yunashko from comment #9)
> So does this mean its an authoring issue?   Scary thought as I can just see
> a bunch of obstinate webmasters out there refusing to make changes to be
> more accessible.  :-)

What I did was force different styles on the page and override the author's styles.  That means authors can do what they want, but I'll override them for my viewing preferences.  From that perspective, the answer to your question is "no, this isn't an authoring issue".

What's missing is to make this easier to do from within FF (and other browsers).  I used an FF extension in order to make this happen, which is sub-optimal.

Comment 11

[Bryen Yunashko]

Attachment: Another example where buttons cannot be seen in WordPress editor.

Comment 12

[David Bolter [:davidb] (NeedInfo me for attention)]

I think we could add a checkbox for "Remove background images".

Gavin how should we triage this bug?

Comment 13

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

(In reply to David Bolter [:davidb] from comment #12)
> I think we could add a checkbox for "Remove background images".
> 
> Gavin how should we triage this bug?

Are you talking about adding back-end support for such a feature, or just exposing that in our prefs UI?

Comment 14

[David Bolter [:davidb] (NeedInfo me for attention)]

(In reply to :Gavin Sharp (use [e-mail] for email) from comment #13)
> (In reply to David Bolter [:davidb] from comment #12)
> > I think we could add a checkbox for "Remove background images".
> > 
> > Gavin how should we triage this bug?
> 
> Are you talking about adding back-end support for such a feature, or just
> exposing that in our prefs UI?

Both I think. Since setting a background color is actually destructive in the cases Bryen mentions it seems to me we should offer users the ability to uncheck 'remove background images' when they specify a background color. I don't know how hard this is on the backend... since we'd only want to override elements without a background image. Joseph shows how to do this in css I think.

At the very least we should warn the user that background images will be overridden, rendering some web apps useless.

So by triage I mean I'm wondering to whom to shop this bug. Probably UI/Ux first?

Comment 15

[Joseph Scheuhammer (:clown)]

(In reply to David Bolter [:davidb] from comment #14)
> ... Joseph shows how to do this in
> css I think.

I show that it's possible to use CSS to override author's text and background colours without altering any other aspect of the background, including not removing background images.

The current FF UI is ambiguous in this regard.  It allows users to choose different text and background colours -- note colours -- and a checkbox labelled "[x] Allow pages to choose their own colors, instead of my selections above".  If unchecked, the user's colour selections are realized, but FF *also* removes all background images.  But, the user didn't explicitly ask to remove the background images.  And, in Bryen's case, it's crucial that those images not be removed.

Comment 16

[Bryen Yunashko]

Any movement on this?  Getting more and more frustrating, to be honest.  The CSS stylesheet created by Joseph seems to work, but I have to reset it for every page I visit, even on same site.  A more permanent solution is needed.

By the way, I came across this http://kb.mozillazine.org/Accessibility_features_of_Firefox#Using_a_high_contrast_theme  The section implies that FF automatically does this by detecting your system is using high-contrast modes.   I don't see this actually happening, so seems to be a documentation error.