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Discord's new UX design is harmful to the visually impaired and colorblind

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Re: Discord's new UX design is harmful to the visually impaired and colorblind

#41

Post by tobr »

dahfizz wrote: post #37
falcolas wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the visually impaired, it's not "difficult" to use, it's closer to "impossible" to use. By toning back the language, you've made it sound like whining and not a legitimate concern. You make it easy to ignore.

"X elements are impossible for me to see because of Y condition" is a perfectly legitimate piece of feedback. "X element being the wrong color is causing catastrophic harm" is insane feedback. By using silly language, they are making themselves easy to ignore.

“Catastrophic harm” is a phrase you came up with. It’s fair to phrase accessibility concerns in terms of harm, because being denied access to something other people can use is a type of harm. “Catastrophic” is very common hyperbole for something you think is highly unfortunate.

Re: Discord's new UX design is harmful to the visually impaired and colorblind

#42

Post by Closi »

cwilkes wrote: post #38
mpalmer wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The language people use to express themselves is important; forming reasonable arguments is an important skill. Falling back on strong emotional language like actively harms is a crutch - unless well-supported by facts or reasoning. Also they don't "suggest" a remedy, they demand it, and their demand is backed by their unsupported claim of "actively harms".

> Also they don't "suggest" a remedy, they demand it Would this post have been better if they said “it might be a good idea if you considered going back to the previous way?” I’m not sure how soft pedaling the ask makes it more reasonable. The post is pretty clear in what is wrong and how to fix it. If anything Discord is the aggressor here with a forced change without an “use the old UI” button. If the posts include…

I think they just mean turn down the language.

> White mentions lack visual clarity and are incredibly harmful to individuals with visual impairment

"Incredibly Harmful" is hyperbole, and for instance could be rewritten as:

> White mentions lack visual clarity and are hard for individuals with visual impairment to read.

Otherwise what does harmful mean? Here are some examples of things that I perceive as incredibly harmful:

* Huffing glue

* Stabbing yourself

* Lead poisoning

Not being able to read a mention without highlighting it, or selecting a different theme, probably doesn't quite class on the same level as these things, even if it should be fixed.

Similarly, Catastrophic means "involving or causing sudden great damage or suffering" - which isn't meant literally, it's hyperbole, but the problem with hyperbole is that writing containing can come across overly exaggerated and emotional.

Re: Discord's new UX design is harmful to the visually impaired and colorblind

#43

Post by faitswulff »

dahfizz wrote: post #10

The language here rubs me the wrong way. Everything is stated as being "incredibly harmful" with no explanation beyond > ...directly harms visually impaired individuals due to lack of visual clarity. I am also not sure how "Elements lack unity" is related to the UI causing harm. I don't use discord, so I have no idea how good the UI is. If the UI is bad and hard for the visually impaired to use, there is definitely a…

Well, if we’re just talking about unwanted opinions, then a sighted person tone policing a visually impaired user rubs me the wrong way. What if they use discord to keep in touch with their family and the product is unusable to them now? Why do you care how emphatically someone expresses how they cannot even properly see the product in question anymore? Imagine stepping into a car and the windshield is completely painted over. You need it to go somewhere. You would be irate! Do you need someone else telling you “you aren’t saying how, specifically, it affects you?” or “why don’t you ask nicely?” Have a little sympathy and the problem is clear. Discord doesn’t need your sympathy. They have an obligation - possibly even a legal obligation - to keep their products accessible to their end users.

Re: Discord's new UX design is harmful to the visually impaired and colorblind

#44

Post by corobo »

falcolas wrote: post #35
1970-01-01 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should rub you the wrong way because the language is wrong! The author has used the wrong word to describe the problem. If you replace the word harm and harmful with difficult it makes sense. harmful: of a kind likely to be damaging difficult: hard to deal with, manage, or overcome I've done it for everyone: >Saturated dark colors against dark backgrounds are hard to read and difficult to parse >White mentions lac…

For the visually impaired, it's not "difficult" to use, it's closer to "impossible" to use. By toning back the language, you've made it sound like whining and not a legitimate concern. You make it easy to ignore.

It's on public feature request software it's already easy to ignore

Re: Discord's new UX design is harmful to the visually impaired and colorblind

#45

Post by eloeffler »

tobr wrote: post #36
eloeffler wrote: post #6

I miss the times™ where theming was a thing in my favorite programs and environments. WinAmp, MySpace, even my Nokia 6300 had themes. I never understood why this trend didn't stay and become more popular.

Theming makes it really hard to update the software in any substantial way. Even the slightest change to the design could end up breaking themes, or being drawn as white text on white background, etc. I think it’s natural that it was more common when auto-updating software wasn’t the norm.

Hm that's a good point. Some access to the theming would be nice though.

Old themes were heavily based on tailored graphics that can really not be adapted easily. But the problem at hand (UI that's hard to read for the visually impaired) could be addressed with at least some access to the theming.

That's something many programs still offer though.

Re: Discord's new UX design is harmful to the visually impaired and colorblind

#46

Post by kodah »

kevingadd wrote: post #31
listless wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s the “harmful” rhetoric that signals “I have an agenda”. We really need to get passed this charged way of conveying perfectly valid feedback. Because come on. It’s a chat app.

Of course they have an agenda. Discord is harder for them to use now, and they want it fixed. When did "agenda" become a negatively charged concept that only bad actors possess? Slack and Teams are chat apps too. Why would chat apps not be important?

Using emotionally charged language is usually pretty off-putting. Some people are used to using emotionally charged language any time they feel some way, but I think that ends up wearing people down for when they hear it in the future. That's probably why you have so many people here commenting about the use of "harm".

Re: Discord's new UX design is harmful to the visually impaired and colorblind

#47

Post by theandrewbailey »

eloeffler wrote: post #30
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I miss the times before applications had their own theming and just used bog-standard OS provided widgets that could be themed globally by the user. That this has fallen out of favor is, in my opinion, a good indication of how unprofessional and user-hostile our industry has become. We didn't use to need bespoke "dark modes", you just changed the colors globally. We did this in the 90s, when 64MB of ram was huge . We…

Switching Windows to dark mode

And yet, Windows 98 let you have more control over its appearance than Windows 10 does.

Re: Discord's new UX design is harmful to the visually impaired and colorblind

#48

Post by wayneftw »

Does anyone know which kind of websites and apps are required to implement accessibility?

I thought it was only government websites originally but then I looked it up and saw that it's a bit more than that. Is there a simple rule to know when I'm required to do this?

(I'm not looking for answers that say: you should always do it because it's a good thing to do. I want to know what the rules are.)

Re: Discord's new UX design is harmful to the visually impaired and colorblind

#49

Post by cyril_st_john »

DiggyJohnson wrote: post #4

Is "harmful" the best word here? I feel like inaccessible much better describes the issue at hand.

Interesting concern for HN commenters to have given the number of "X Considered Harmful" articles that make it to the front page here.

Re: Discord's new UX design is harmful to the visually impaired and colorblind

#50

Post by ffn »

dahfizz wrote: post #10

The language here rubs me the wrong way. Everything is stated as being "incredibly harmful" with no explanation beyond > ...directly harms visually impaired individuals due to lack of visual clarity. I am also not sure how "Elements lack unity" is related to the UI causing harm. I don't use discord, so I have no idea how good the UI is. If the UI is bad and hard for the visually impaired to use, there is definitely a…

Yeah, the phrase "cause harm" carries a lot of affect (e.g. urgency, impatience, panic, outrage, etc.). If we were to have a graph of common word usage and association, the words "cause harm" would be strongly linked with other phrases like

- morally repulsive

- life or death

- fix immediately

All of which is just one step away from the affect-saturated words like "hitler / mao / stalin", "genocide", etc.,

As such "cause harm" is one of those magical phrases in our common lexicon that has gained the power to turn an "is" to an "ought", and the author uses it as the logical glue to connect the relatively descriptive phrase of "This is not good UX design" to the proscription of "revert the changes"

But by using such an affect-laden phrase, the author is implicitly asking the reader to assign more weight to feelings (e.g. impatience, outrage, disgust, etc.,) and less weight to calculated executive thought.

This attempt through language to subvert the executive portion of our brain in favor of more primal processes makes me feel the whole article is suspect. After all, if the author's argument can be one that stands up to executive scrutiny, than what is the intention when the author attempts to by-pass executive scrutiny?

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