Interesting times in the “blogosphere” this week. Markus Mielke from the IE Blog may have released details on the CSS changes for Internet Explorer 7 but the hot topic has to be the “designer backlash” from Roger Johansson’s post “Light text on dark background vs. readability“.

First Veerle pitches in with a counter post “My view on light text on dark background vs. readability” and then the next follow-up came from Jeff Croft’s “Has accessibility been taken too far?” post. To be honest I didn’t get overly upset. I think he was playing devil’s advocate with himself at times but there were many supportive comments from designers—well, people love a bandwagon right? (the wagon had already been through Roger’s blog). I took the time to read all the comments that were, by and large, civil and I rather enjoyed the fact that a nerve had been struck and people, a lot of people, were now discussing the issue. We all have views but I really do believe you have to listen to someone else’s (and from the other side of the fence) to truly understand an issue and tackle it one way or the other—at the very least you walk away having learned something new about the world. Anyway, I digress. In a nutshell I’m glad everyone is discussing this—it pushes our understanding and knowledge along.

Other blogs who have published their feelings on the matter include:

• Mike Cherim’s “Not Quite Black and White” post and later comment.
• Jon Gibbins (dotjay) “Some Views on Contemporary Web Accessibility“.
• Joe Dolson’s “Accessibility has NOT been taken too far“.
• and more! (sorry, not enough hours in the day…)

Grab some popcorn and a beverage of choice and enjoy the show(down).

.Net magazine, based in the UK has recently had a redesign (and realign?) with many leading lights of our industry on the advisory panel or writing articles. Two full-price issues later and I’m close to getting round to taking out a subscription now that they are saying the right things. However, and you knew a “but” was coming soon, the latest blog entry on PAS 78 has me biting my tongue hard to not post directly there…

Can we please not give link love to design agencies and consultancies (Indigo New Media and User Vision) talking about accessibility do’s when their own websites and latest portfolio entries are tables-based designs? And I really enjoyed scrolling your website for two miles too, Richard Quick. Thanks for that. Two or three for the Snakeoil Salesman category?