Uchū – Color palette for internet lovers

I think there's too much focus on 'readability' these days. At work we have a new team that's making us measure all the contrasts for people with reading difficulties. Contrast has to be > 80% or something. And text sizes huge. And they don't allow us to change our themes. Or to install plugins like dark reader "for security".

Problem is, it makes everything super fugly and eye-straining for everyone else (considering no dark reader allowed anymore). And it's much harder to see which parts are important and which aren't. Because everything is super bold and screamy. I didn't buy a 4.7 million colour display to only show 10 of them. I tend to get headaches from really high contrast, I prefer using a softer theme like solarized.

The 0.5% of employees with vision issues would be equally well served with a browser plugin that adjusts it for their particular issue. Not everyone with visual difficulties has the same issue, after all. Some people can't see certain colour combinations so they need to be avoided or modified. Some just see blurry so they need large fonts but probably even larger than they are now. Some can't see at all and they're not helped by this either, they just need a braille ruler and good alt tags on images. Which is something nobody in the company seems to care about. They just care about things that are super noticeable.

We used to have a nice gentle email signature that is now all kindergarten colours and huge fonts and it's just so in your face. For something that nobody ever reads anyway. It was de-emphasised for a reason, so people know it's there but that it's not important information unless you're really looking for it. If you really want to read it you can always just highlight it. Or switch to plain text mode.

Ps: I'm not against catering for disabilities at all, but I'd like to see a more tailored approach. Not trying to fix one thing and breaking it for everyone else. I don't set my phone on huge text mode either but I'm happy it's there for people that do need it.

The OS makers solved this long ago -- settings. That team could just listen to the OS settings for 'high contrast', font size, etc and adjust their UI to match.

Colour blindness (to take a single issue) is commonly quoted at about 4.5% globally (exact percentage varies by ethnicity so it varies by country). Your "0.5%" figure wildly underestimates the issue IMO.

I agree that local settings should override. But lets start with something legible and override with finely-graduated pastels, not the other way around (as part of a wider push towards good UX defaults).

(Using a high contrast dark mode with small text over here. It's what works for me, and "you can't configure your own environment because security" would have me kicking and screaming like a toddler).

Lack of contrast hinders everyone with any kind of vision issues (old/colorblind etc.)

“Too much” contrast means young hipsters complain it burns their eyes.

Even the highest standards for readability leave a comfortable range for expressing creativity (and soft colors), it’s not like they require #000 on #FFF.

Monitors also display things differently. We once had a designer with a high-end Mac who liked to use light gray font on a white background. I never understood why he did that - it was barely visible. Then I looked at his monitor, and everything was crisp.

OS settings are targeted towards people with health issues. Usability guidelines are meant for people who want to see some text once in a while. Low-contrast “dark mode” is much, much more problematic than typical OS defaults.

4.5% includes everyone with some level of colourblindness, but total colourblindness is much, much smaller (at least by a couple of orders of magnitude). In terms of demographics, women are much less strongly impacted (around 0.5%), and Caucasian men the highest with almost 10%.

Addressing an issue that affects 10% of a particular demographic (especially when that demographic is over represented on the internet in general) is wise, but the answer is not just “choose better colours” because of the many different forms of colourblindness.

The answer is choosing sensible defaults (stick to frequently used patterns your users have encountered before), support with high-contrast iconography and shape where possible, and don’t rely on colour alone for any part of your design (use tools like https://www.toptal.com/designers/colorfilter to see how your design survives through colourblind eyes).

> Lack of contrast hinders everyone with any kind of vision issues (old/colorblind etc.)

False. Someone with some kind, but not everyone with any kind. This broad stroke that you've just painted is counter to the goals of accessibility.

> “Too much” contrast means young hipsters complain it burns their eyes.

Let's not trivialize disabilities we don't even know exist. But if you wanted to research this, you can look up the term "photophobia" or "light sensitivity".

> Even the highest standards for readability leave a comfortable range for expressing creativity (and soft colors), it’s not like they require #000 on #FFF.

Again, false.

Let's consult Accessibility Requirements for People with Low Vision:

> 2.4.2 Light and Glare Sensitivity

> Many people with low vision have extreme sensitivity to light (called photophobia). Bright light makes it difficult or impossible to see, and causes eye pain and headaches. For some people, the normal brightness of a computer screen with a light background is not readable and painful. They need to change the background to a darker color. Glare sensitivity is common with age-related vision changes and cataracts.

> [...]

> 3.1.2 Text Contrast

> As mentioned in the Light Sensitivity section, some people need low brightness, especially for backgrounds. Some people who need low brightness for backgrounds also need low brightness overall and thus need low brightness text.

> Other people need high contrast between text and background, including many older people who lose contrast sensitivity from ageing. Some read better with dark text on light background.

> For some people, common color combinations or colors from a limited color palette work fine, for example, black text on white background or the inverse with white text on black background. Other people need to select more specific background and text colors. For example, people who need low brightness overall, need to select the specific background and text colors that provide sufficient contrast for them yet not too high brightness. Readable and optimal color combinations differs vastly among individuals and can even vary for one individual depending on conditions such as fatigue and lighting.

(emphasis mine)

Source: https://w3c.github.io/low-vision-a11y-tf/requirements.html

> Let's not trivialize disabilities we don't even know exist.

Ok, fair. But I don’t think it’s an accident that all the people I hear complain about contrast being too high are 20-something engineers.

There’s nothing about good contrast that says it needs to blaze your eyes off. You can have perfectly good contrast with a completely black background and minimal amounts of light. Like I said, there’s no reason that “contrast” needs to mean black on white.

I'm not colorblind, but I'm older, and I can't read the kind of low-contrast stuff I wouldn't even notice as being low-contrast in my 20s or 30s.

I'm almost 50. And I have a big problem with my display, even during the day I run it at 0% brightness. During the night it's really way too bright. This is why I use dark mode. I also sometimes reduce the contrast but this messes up colour accuracy in a bad way.

I agree it's not really a content issue as much as a hardware issue. LCD screens have a limited backlight range and seem to be optimised for peak brightness not lowest brightness. Probably because big numbers sell better on paper. Even reviews only talk about top brightness these days.

My screen only tops around 200 nits and the lowest setting is way too high.

Yeah, I'm at the point where I'm looking at manually positioning/removing one of those full-screen dimming filters so I can use my monitor past 7pm. And 90% of the time if a screen goes really dim it does so with savage PWM.

Yes, PWM is another big issue. I'm very sensitive to it. Even though I grew up with CRT's (or perhaps because of that).

Luckily my display doesn't do that. It's also very hard to figure out through reviews so I'm glad it doesn't.

I was thinking about such a filter. But I haven't seen them for sale, I just know they exist (I was thinking about ND filters used in photography). But I wasn't sure if they exist at this size.

An honest interest, have you tried a dark mode on any device? Every time I tried it (sometimes as a new default setting after update for some JetBrains IDE), I did not like it at all for some reason as too much eye stress.

> I don’t think it’s an accident that all the people I hear complain about contrast being too high are 20-something engineers

Well, maybe that's because it isn't an accident at all! Maybe it isn't just them being a bunch of hipsters!

- Light sensitivity reduces with age, so those 20-year olds are actually more sensitive to light than people who are older than them.

- They're engineers, so there's a good chance they are looking at a screen 8+ hours a day. This means that they're greatly affected by anything that makes looking at a screen less comfortable.

- They're engineers, so they know how software works and that the color scheme isn't set in stone. My parents just accept that some things don't work how they want them to work. I try to find a tool to make it work how I want it to work, because I can.

The brand I found when I did the research was LightDims. They seem to come in pretty large sheets. Haven't actually ordered any though.

Yeah, I'm also PWM sensitive. You can buy devices which measure it fortunately but I've been making do with a phone camera on a high/brief shutter speed.

I prefer high-contrast dark mode, it seems less tiring to me, but I think it depends on the light conditions around the PC. It's usually not very bright where I work.

If it's very bright, I prefer light mode.

From the comment I replied to (emphasis mine):

> At work we have a new team that's making us measure all the contrasts for *people with reading difficulties*

I use it a lot, even though it's supposed to be bad for me (astigmatism).

I am very used to it though, as I started out when computers just showed green (or amber) text on a black background. And those displays could also be tuned much better than current ones. I have an old serial terminal that I can set so low I can barely make out the text in a pitch-black room, and it can go so bright that it is readable in a sunlit room. A lot of flexibility was lost with the move to LCD (and even more with Amoled, which suffers from black smearing at low brightness, and usually really bad PWM).

By total colourblindness do you mean achromatopsia? It's like hearing someone says 42% of Americans have obesity and making a remark this may be true to some level of obesity, but TOTAL OBESITY is much much smaller, at least by a couple of orders of magnitude :D

Not quite. I'm talking about monochromacy, which includes achromatopsia, but casts a slightly wider net.

Anyway, my main point is that although I'm technically colour blind, unless you're using particularly muddy shades of red and green, or particularly small splashes of colour, it doesn't matter too much. The key goal is to avoid colour-dependent design, but not to be afraid of colour either.

> You can have perfectly good contrast with a completely black background and minimal amounts of light.

Therein lies the problem: this assumption is incorrect. I encourage you to read what I quoted from that article again. Accessibility can not have a one-size-fits-all approach. Your suggested "medium contrast" to accommodate the different spectrums of visual impairment inevitably detriments both sides.

All you're arguing for here is exactly what you're purporting to argue against, which is to assume one party's request for accomodations is less legitimate than another's. It's a superficial form of advocacy, that, while I understand comes from a place of good intentions, does not actually accommodate disabilities in the true spirit of accessibility.

I can assure you that the low-contrast accomodation in the linked article would make it difficult for the person who needs a high-contrast accomodation, and vice versa.

The comment that started this conversation is correct: all approaches to accessibility must have levers to pull to accommodate everyone. That includes allowing for accomodations in whatever form is reasonable. Extensions that change the way a website is displayed are one such accomodation. By being so rigid, this company has not implemented accessibility, they have implemented changes that shift disadvantage to another party. It's not defensible.