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Contrast Rebellion

contrastrebellion.com

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Re: Contrast Rebellion

#11

Post by randallsquared »

hawkice wrote: post #7
andybak wrote: post #4

Many of the examples looked borderline to me. How much contrast is 'enough'? Also - surely this is something that should be fixable in the OS or browser? OSX has an high-contrast accessibility mode. Do we really need to fix this at source?

Good rule for contrast: If you would refer to the text color and background color by the same word, that's not enough contrast. Compare the good contrast examples, largely black on white or white on black, with the bad examples, universally gray on gray (or off-white on off-white).

So, the fewer words you know to refer to colors, the more contrast matters to you? :)

Re: Contrast Rebellion

#13

Post by mikeash »

randallsquared wrote: post #11
hawkice wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good rule for contrast: If you would refer to the text color and background color by the same word, that's not enough contrast. Compare the good contrast examples, largely black on white or white on black, with the bad examples, universally gray on gray (or off-white on off-white).

So, the fewer words you know to refer to colors, the more contrast matters to you? :)

You joke, but I bet it correlates pretty well.

Re: Contrast Rebellion

#14

Post by dreamfactory2 »

Not sure about the aesthetics argument. Form follows function - if it functions well it looks good, and vice versa. (What people sometimes miss is that you aren't born with a sense of aesthetics/taste but it needs to be learned and the above rule is a good way of improving your understanding of what looks good.)

Re: Contrast Rebellion

#15

Post by EliRivers »

randallsquared wrote: post #11
hawkice wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good rule for contrast: If you would refer to the text color and background color by the same word, that's not enough contrast. Compare the good contrast examples, largely black on white or white on black, with the bad examples, universally gray on gray (or off-white on off-white).

So, the fewer words you know to refer to colors, the more contrast matters to you? :)

This rings a bell inside my head; given people from a language/culture with two different words for what English speakers would identify as barely different shades of the same colour, they are objectively better at identifying those two shades than the native English speaker. Which essentially gives the answer "yes" to your question.

Here's a reference that might be what's ringing inside my head: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11759-russian-speakers...

Particularly relevant quote: "This is the first time that evidence has been offered to show cross-linguistic differences in colour perception in an objective task"

Here's more: https://eagereyes.org/blog/2011/you-only-see-colors-you-can-...

Re: Contrast Rebellion

#16

Post by rayiner »

Web design was perfected in 1454 when Gutenberg typeset his Bibles with dark black text on light colored paper (also: with narrow, full-justified columns). Deviation from that is abusive to your readers and an affront to common decency.

Re: Contrast Rebellion

#17

Post by DanBC »

andybak wrote: post #4

Many of the examples looked borderline to me. How much contrast is 'enough'? Also - surely this is something that should be fixable in the OS or browser? OSX has an high-contrast accessibility mode. Do we really need to fix this at source?

> do we really need to fix this at source?

Yes. Otherwise you are chosing to exclude people.

Re: Contrast Rebellion

#18

Post by sukilot »

EliRivers wrote: post #15
randallsquared wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, the fewer words you know to refer to colors, the more contrast matters to you? :)

This rings a bell inside my head; given people from a language/culture with two different words for what English speakers would identify as barely different shades of the same colour, they are objectively better at identifying those two shades than the native English speaker. Which essentially gives the answer "yes" to your question. Here's a reference that might be what's ringing inside my head: http://www.newscient…

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity

Re: Contrast Rebellion

#19

Post by sukilot »

pygy_ wrote: post #8
dasil003 wrote: post #6

The critique of HN seems off-base. The low-contrast comments are the ones that are downvoted and therefore the low-contrast is there specifically to make them less readable because they ostensibly deserve less attention.

It also applies to the text of self-posts (tell/ask HN), which is what Contrast Rebellion points out.

I think that is also intentional, to discourage self posts.

Re: Contrast Rebellion

#20

Post by [deleted] »

pygy_ wrote: post #8
dasil003 wrote: post #6

The critique of HN seems off-base. The low-contrast comments are the ones that are downvoted and therefore the low-contrast is there specifically to make them less readable because they ostensibly deserve less attention.

It also applies to the text of self-posts (tell/ask HN), which is what Contrast Rebellion points out.

[deleted]
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