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Change the colour of grey text back to black on website using poor contrast text

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Re: Change the colour of grey text back to black on website using poor contrast text

#51

Post by Ensorceled »

chrisseaton wrote: post #30
cwillu wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meta-irony at its finest.

What contrast do you want? A billion to one? At some point it's excessive, right? So there's some value less than infinite that you're after. Why is your monitor's maximum contrast the right value?

When ever there are discussions about accessibility there are always voices calling for "moderation" ... does every building really need a ramp? why does every single restaurant need an accessible bathroom? do those people really need all that contrast?

Re: Change the colour of grey text back to black on website using poor contrast text

#52

Post by chrisseaton »

Ensorceled wrote: post #51
chrisseaton wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What contrast do you want? A billion to one? At some point it's excessive, right? So there's some value less than infinite that you're after. Why is your monitor's maximum contrast the right value?

When ever there are discussions about accessibility there are always voices calling for "moderation" ... does every building really need a ramp? why does every single restaurant need an accessible bathroom? do those people really need all that contrast?

But you can exceed accessibility requirements without using absolute black and white.

And for example some people require larger fonts for accessibility reasons - but we don't make all website with 100 point fonts do we? Instead we use tools to magnify the screen - the same way your OS can increase contrast for you if you need it. There's moderation there.

Re: Change the colour of grey text back to black on website using poor contrast text

#53

Post by ImaCake »

jmlucjav wrote: post #22

Anybody has some extension to change colors when background is black and text is white? I don't know if this is common or not, but I just cannot look at that for more than a few seconds, my eyes burn. I never found an extension for Chrome that fixed this.

Yes, you want DarkReader which is an extension available on most web browsers. Aside from being able to dark mode websites it has ways to complete customise the background and text colours. I am writing this with high contrast orange text on dark brown background on ios safari.

https://darkreader.org/

Re: Change the colour of grey text back to black on website using poor contrast text

#54

Post by da39a3ee »

mikae1 wrote: post #4
sssilver wrote: post #3

I love the “nothing in nature is true black so don’t use #000000” argument. Correct, nothing is, and your #000000 won’t be either once it’s shown on a physical screen.

I find there's often a high degree of educated comments here on HN. But, when it comes to monitors, readability and the physics of light something happens. #000 on #fff won't burn out your retinas. :)

I think the trouble is that even educated humans struggle to talk intelligently about medical and psychological problems. We all worry about our health and mortality, and the idea that a psychological or medical condition threatens your life is somewhere between an existential threat, and a worrying cloud over your life. As a result, people easily become wedded to the idea that a particular condition is affecting them, or someone close to them. And they lose their normal objectivity when it comes to swallowing up medical jargon and scientific-sounding names for nebulous psychological / educational phenomena.

Re: Change the colour of grey text back to black on website using poor contrast text

#55

Post by intrasight »

mikae1 wrote: post #14
hnbad wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a difference between using "soft black" and using low-contrast gray like you're Apple in the 2010s. The thing about pure black isn't that it's unnatural, but that when paired with white its contrast can actually be uncomfortable and less accessible than a slightly toned down color combination (especially on full brightness).

> The thing about pure black isn't that it's unnatural, but that when paired with white its contrast can actually be uncomfortable and less accessible than a slightly toned down color combination (especially on full brightness). Can you find a citation for that statement? WCAG 2.1[0] mentions minimum contrast, but not maximum. The success criterion page itself is written in #000 on #fff. :) https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCA…

My first job was building monitoring software used by operators of nuclear power plants. I have no citations, but they leveraged some specialized human factors research that said "don't use black". The standard in the industry is dark grey.

Re: Change the colour of grey text back to black on website using poor contrast text

#56

Post by jabroni_salad »

kuschku wrote: post #48
hexo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, glad you can lower contrast setting on your monitor and leave normal contrast to the rest of us.

I can’t, as then I’d have to re-calibrate it again. But you can easily just increase the contrast setting on your monitor and leave sensible defaults for the rest of us :)

the shitty tn panels my workplace gives us are already maxed out in that regard. I needed to juice them in order to view a logon form.

Re: Change the colour of grey text back to black on website using poor contrast text

#57

Post by userbinator »

hnbad wrote: post #10
mikae1 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find there's often a high degree of educated comments here on HN. But, when it comes to monitors, readability and the physics of light something happens. #000 on #fff won't burn out your retinas. :)

There's a difference between using "soft black" and using low-contrast gray like you're Apple in the 2010s. The thing about pure black isn't that it's unnatural, but that when paired with white its contrast can actually be uncomfortable and less accessible than a slightly toned down color combination (especially on full brightness).

especially on full brightness

Then turn down the brightness. Pure black/white should never be uncomfortable, if it is then your monitor needs adjusted. In fact I suspect a lot of this stupid low-contrast trend comes from designers who don't know that and are trying to compensate for it in software.

Monitors come with the brightness set ridiculously high so they'll look good in a showroom (and possibly to make the backlight wear out faster, but that's another rant...), but it's definitely not where normal use should be, unless you're in direct sunlight.

Re: Change the colour of grey text back to black on website using poor contrast text

#58

Post by ciwolsey »

greggsy wrote: post #18
perihelions wrote: post #9

I recommend people with similar interests take a look at uBlock's filter language (yes, the ad blocker). It's a short and shallow learning curve until you can inject your personal CSS into webpages, and incrementally tweak them. Two small examples: "Show all text on the internet as black" *##*:style(color: black !important) "Show comment text on HN as bold" ycombinator.com##.comment:style(font-weight: bold !important…

Dark Reader renders 90% of pages fine with no tweaking, the remainder aren’t hard to switch to an alternative mode. Best $7.99 I’ve spent.

Isn't it free though?

Re: Change the colour of grey text back to black on website using poor contrast text

#59

Post by ciwolsey »

sssilver wrote: post #3

I love the “nothing in nature is true black so don’t use #000000” argument. Correct, nothing is, and your #000000 won’t be either once it’s shown on a physical screen.

Pure black and white on a screen is far more fatiguing on a screen than on off a screen so I don't see what's wrong with compensating for that fact.

Re: Change the colour of grey text back to black on website using poor contrast text

#60

Post by alpaca128 »

rectang wrote: post #43
httpsterio wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://dm-ed.com/info/contrast-sensitivity/ A lot of high contrast combinations are less accessible and even if it doesn't make the text illegible, too much contrast is going to be a strain on the eyes for most people. Generally, WCAG AA or AAA is enough for most people and you hit that already with #555 on a white background. Something like #1a1a1a is close to the darkest I'd use in most cases.

I'm sympathetic to the idea that some people need reduced contrast to read comfortably. They are in the same boat as people who need maximum contrast because of other visual impairments, most commonly focal issues. Why wouldn't people who need less contrast simply reduce the contrast on their monitors, though? It seems to me as though designing for those who need low contrast excludes those who need high contrast, bu…

> Why wouldn't people who need less contrast simply reduce the contrast on their monitors, though?

Because I don't want to make everything else look worse just to lower contrast in text?

And support for low contrast doesn't mean excluding others, it can just be a setting. Like Windows has been doing for a long time with its high-contrast mode. Websites and apps are increasingly adopting dark themes, next we should push for a switch between high and lower contrast. It's just as easy from a technical standpoint. Browsers are already pretty far, letting the user set specific fonts and font sizes, and Firefox' reader mode and its options are great as well.

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