Design Tip: Never Use Black (2012)
ianstormtaylor.com
ianstormtaylor.com
A #000 pixel on the screen of your mobile or laptop isn't black, either.
I strictly adhered to the principle of never using black until I was specifically asked by one of my users that has presbyopia (and most people over 50 or 60 have it, to some degree) to make the text black. Black text was much easier for them to read than the standard Bootstrap dark colour with the same font size.
the other commenter was right, 4.5:1 ratio minimum.
Though with modern OLED screens they get really close.
Ideally if you design some UI, do it in Black and White first, if it remains usable and somewhat pretty, add colors.
Or if it does provide functional information (traffic-light style status displays for instance), it is fine if the information is also carried by other means.
> do it in Black and White first ... then add colors.
Exactly. That way anyone with reasonable vision[1] can use the result and it is enhanced for those with good colour vision, rather than requiring good colour vision to be properly usable.
[1] Other serious visual impairments (up to and including complete blindness) should be considered too where possible, of course. Keep contrast high, try to design with screen readers and other common aids in mind, ...
If your application remains readable and functional on a terminal output, chances are high a screen reader can handle it (since I can't afford any of the screen readers people seem to use, that's what I'm stuck with, aside from following general guidelines on this)
Progressive enhancing, the process of having a working HTML page, enhance with CSS/Images and then enhance with JS, is sadly a rather lost art in modern webdevs.
The experience of colourblind people can vary wildly but for me other colours are harder to discern than red vs green. Blues, purples and pinks all are all very tricky.
If however you want to use red and green for some styling element, knock yourself out!
I have the opposite issue - my color perception is 100%, so I can distinguish very slight differences in color tones. What might look acceptable to you might be unacceptable to me and vice versa ;-)
Colorblindness also has very well established definitions. Note: learning what words mean should come before trying to redefine them.
It's not binary. There is a range from not colorblind to minor defience to fully red-green colorblind
Then my brother walked by and told me that in fact it was green....
Some LEDs are a nightmare, and I work in IT
There is also a reason some of the largest news pubs do it too.
https://www.nytimes.com #000 #333 https://www.washingtonpost.com #2a2a2a
But black on a screen is not an unnatural black per se. On most screens you will get a baseline brightness and tint, and larger black areas pick up (diffuse or clear) reflections from the environment.
This is the key idea of the article - very high contrast is powerful visually, and you should avoid too high contrast if that isn't what you want.
This can be good advice, but realize that #000 is not pure black (colors on the screen are also colors in the environment, so they may get reflection or be emitting light, even if they are displaying #000), and some users may prefer or need high contrast for accessibility, especially in very bright environments.
But if you want to see the closest to pure black you can get, go to a total eclipse - that disk of the moon surrounded by the sun's corona was _amazing_! Such an intense contrast, and it really did overpower everything else.
And yes, even that isn't "pure black" - but it sure felt like it!
It gets worse as you age and presbyopia sets in.
It is so much easier (for me, at least) to read high contrast text than this modern trend of "gosh don't use real black and white" in the UI. Additionally, actual pixel black is very (um, perfectly) energy efficient on OLED displays like my iPhone X and Alienware 13.
I like the discussion of black in art, though.
Incidentally I also read HN with a black background, use black terminal backgrounds, black editor backgrounds. Sometimes I toy with brighter backgrounds, but I prefer thigher contrast to brighter backgrounds every time.
Of course that might well be because no screen I have will give a pure black.
OLED screens and their close approximations to "pure black" (unlit pixels) I think are more reason to use dark themes with real black as background. It uses less energy, is good for batteries, and sends less overall light into our over-stimulated eyeballs.