Stop using grey text (2025)
catskull.net
Stop using grey text (2025)
1–10 of 75 posts
Re: Stop using grey text (2025)
#2More generally use a contrast checker on any pair of colours that are likely to be in juxtaposition and need to be legible.
Helpful of the website to demonstrate the problem in situ in its tag links and code comments! (Maybe just in dark mode?)
Re: Stop using grey text (2025)
#3Screen brightness is a pretty important contributing factor. If you have this problem a lot, verify your screen is bright enough. ( Regardless of his point )
Re: Stop using grey text (2025)
#4Dark/charcoal grey is better than pure black for text. But it's still dark enough that most people would call it black.
Re: Stop using grey text (2025)
#5More generally use a contrast checker on any pair of colours that are likely to be in juxtaposition and need to be legible. Helpful of the website to demonstrate the problem in situ in its tag links and code comments! (Maybe just in dark mode?)
Yes, you want enough contrast, but not too much. Either extreme is hard to look at for long periods.
Re: Stop using grey text (2025)
#6Isn't most of the text on the page grey? It's not white, it's rgb(215,215,216). And the background is not black. Some worse examples are shown, but then the message comes across as "don't use grey unless you know what you're doing, like I do, because I'm using grey while I tell you not to use grey, but mine is okay."
Maybe aside from the unset option, something more specific about a minimum contrast threshold would be useful. Ideally the author wouldn't be breaking below that threshold themselves while explaining it.
Re: Stop using grey text (2025)
#7Yes, I wish sites that use grey text should be investigated as part of the US disability act.
People with even minor sight issues can have a hard time with sites designed that way. When I run across a site like that I usually try it in lynx, if the site does not work in lynx, I block it on my system so I would not waste my time with it.
Re: Stop using grey text (2025)
#8Isn't most of the text on the page grey? It's not white, it's rgb(215,215,216). And the background is not black. Some worse examples are shown, but then the message comes across as "don't use grey unless you know what you're doing, like I do, because I'm using grey while I tell you not to use grey, but mine is okay." Maybe aside from the unset option, something more specific about a minimum contrast threshold would b…
That, plus the line "Or, you could just not do it [change your colors with CSS] in the first place which would look like this:" — followed by a super-duper-CSS-styled box thingie full of gray text.
Re: Stop using grey text (2025)
#9More generally use a contrast checker on any pair of colours that are likely to be in juxtaposition and need to be legible. Helpful of the website to demonstrate the problem in situ in its tag links and code comments! (Maybe just in dark mode?)
WCAG color contrast checkers in particular have never steered me wrong. It's interesting (but makes sense) that contrast needs to be higher for small text than for large text!
Re: Stop using grey text (2025)
#10Dark/charcoal grey is better than pure black for text. But it's still dark enough that most people would call it black.
The problem is contrast, really. Some color combos are terrible, and you also have issues with color-blindness (which is why gray is used a lot).
Gray text, against a gray background, can suck.
I’m getting on in years, and low-contrast text affects me a lot more, these days, than it used to.