Save Energy, Save Eyestrain – Try a Different Color Scheme

The Cost of Ink or Why History Trumps Common Sense

Open up Microsoft Word or most web sites and the type is laid out in black against a white background like most books or newspapers. Like most books or newspapers? Why? Dark ink on white pages made more sense than white ink on dyed pages when ink is costly. It is a lot cheaper to bleach paper white and then cover a tiny portion with a bit of black ink than to ink every page completely black and then use white out to add text. This is true despite the easier read being the losing color scheme. Economics wins, every time.

Do we need to follow this tradition in the digital age? Electronic ink costs nothing. As a matter of fact, bright white screens must draw more electricity. So alternate color schemes are probably more environmental than the old standard. Save energy, save eyestrain. Go light on dark.

Changing Color Schemes is Tricky

Let’s assume that I have convinced you to change color schemes. How do you do it? If you have a screen magnifying software, such as ZoomText, this may be easy. Many such programs offers an ‘inverse’ color scheme option. If not, it is not so easy. In Firefox, you can use the Accessibar plugin to change color schemes of we sites on the fly. Otherwise, you need to meddle with the operating system, either Windows or MacOS. In Windows, you can edit the display properties, but this takes some time and tinkering.

Some examples

• Setting up Lignt-on-Dark Contrast for PDFs
• High Contrast and Dark-on-Light Windows XP
  
• Contrast options in Internet Explorer
• High-contrast Cell Phones
• Call for Alternative Google Color Schemes
• Call for Accessible Windows Vista Themes

Tags: color scheme, contrast, gripe, ink, rant

This entry was posted on April 29, 2009 at 9:35 am and is filed under large print. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.