h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

pure and simple - I don't like it one little bit - it's bland

I'm a dyslexic researcher there are many many of us about
I use Goo,
many people also do this

I like goo, its easy for me to read
indeed for years I had MS word set up so it opened blue with white text

it takes several moments of pained blinking to get used to the new colour

will I continue to use it, probably,
will I enjoy it as much?
sadly probably not

Look at !Ouch - http://www.bbc.co.uk/ouch/
Its a BBC Disabilty site with visual aid functionality and features that could most likely be applied to the h2g2 site.

I like that Ouch feature for changing font sizes and colours

A font size changer button is easy to add to the IE browser yourself.

Go to Tools> Toolbars> Customize
Find the 'Text size' button in the left pane. Select it and click the Add-> button [You can also move it to where you want it in the order of buttons]
Click when done

You then get a choice of 5 sizes

Simples

You can also hold down Ctrl and press + or - to change the text size in just about any browser.

I knew it was something like that! I just couldn't remember the Ctrl.

Of course you can always press Start > All Programs > Accessories > Ease of Access but it has to be better when it is built into site coding.

That Ouch! feature should be standard across all bbc sites if they want to take disability seriously. Can't remember, but doesn't the main bbc page and news pages let you change the look in some way too?

There's going to be some issues about font size and spacing (I'm getting overlapping words on my 15" laptop), and some of that can probably be sorted via browser settings. When we've had the change to trial the new site we'll know more, eh?

On the main page :- http://www.bbc.co.uk you can change the page colour using the 'Customise this Page' button at the bottom of the page.

For a start, the grey on blue in the sidebar is pretty much exactly the same colour value, rendering it unreadable if you're colourblind...

>>You can also hold down Ctrl and press + or - to change the text size in just about any browser.

That solves some problems but not all. I notice this on newer sites, that they've been designed without thinking about what happens when someone uses Ctrl +. The text will enlarge but often it means it overlaps or disappears out of the display box it is in. Whenever I see that I just think the designer and/or programmer didn't know what they were doing. It's a shame to see the bbc still doing it, or doing it again (alabaster used to be a problem some years ago but then it got fixed).

>>You can also hold down Ctrl and press + or - to change the text size in just about any browser.

CTRL-+ and CTRL-- zoom in and out, thereby changing the amount of the full page that is visible within the display, which is not the same thing as changing the font size.