Contrast Rebellion – to hell with unreadable, low-contrast texts
contrastrebellion.com
contrastrebellion.com
I can assure you from many talks I had with customers: There is nearly nothing more subjective than color perception. Some people will be bothered by a low contrast, others by a high contrast. They are not bothered because they are wrong, they are bothered because what feels good to them is different.
Additionally the whole thing depends more than we would like on the screens used.
That high contrast example on a low contrast screen might physically have the same brightness difference as the low contrast example on a expensive high contrast screen. Screen contrast certainly increased during the last two/three decades. Do we adjust our guidelines to this?
Is there such a thing as too high contrast? Ask yourself, watch out of the window and try to focus on the part where dark and light meet, depending on the weather and light direction this contrast can be high enough to be uncomfortable to your eyes.
Of course the opposite is true as well, too low contrast can be extremely exhausting either. But both differ with individuals: Some will find a high contrast to be perfectly easy on their eyes and far more readable, while for others it might be too much and exhaust them over longer periods. People who work with colors commercially have to strike a good balance here and take their own (often more sensitive) perception out of the equation.
Being bothered by high contrast is very exceptional and can't be compared, being hard to see and unpleasing to see are entirely different problems. In one you need to strain your eyes and the other to adjust your aesthetic sensibilities.
It isn't very exceptional, it is just less common than problems with low contrast (mostly for demographic reasons). It is also the main reason why every display has a Brightness setting and why proper workspace illumination is important for the health of your eyes.
I agree that accessability is important, and excessive use of low contrast, thin or small fonts is not acceptable because it affects the higher percentage of people. However:
1. Saying that higher contrast is better objectively for everybody is and not a matter of personal preference is false, because it isn't. Some people prefer their contrast not to be high and these people exist. I worked with them.
2. On the web gladly we can offer multiple versions of a page (and potentially even re-style what we see). Light and dark themes are a good example for this. Instead of deciding on one thing that fits all people maybe we should think more in terms of providing the best thing for multiple needs.
I'm sure due to this condition that I can't speak for the majority of the population, but it seems to suggest this: everyone's eyes are different. Sometimes in tiny, subtle ways. In my case, a tiny bit less contrast helps tremendously with legibility, and I find dark themes easier to read because the halo is less pronounced. Other users might have a different experience. As much as possible, accommodating user preference (especially light / dark theme) will help those of us who need to tweak further tremendously.
The Contrast Rebellion - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26046190 - Feb 2021 (5 comments)
The Contrast Rebellion - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14575153 - June 2017 (46 comments)
Contrast Rebellion - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9442322 - April 2015 (70 comments)
Ask HN: Fixing low contrast websites on the client side - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9020408 - Feb 2015 (4 comments)
Webdesigners: please make text readable - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2807047 - July 2011 (106 comments)
Here's how Firefox's reader mode implementation does it: https://github.com/mozilla/readability/blob/master/Readabili...
1: https://medium.com/@mandy.michael/building-websites-for-safa...
Back to the drawing board.
It feels pretty gross to duplicate native functionality, sure. But it probably beats waiting for browsers to start exposing those APIs; they don't do that for a reason, and that reason seems unlikely to change very soon.
Scroll hijacking is a separate issue that must be addressed separately.
Cough cough HackerNews!
That's the text of a text post. The same issue can be seen here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26739220
This also confuses the hell out of me, I always "read" them as "heavily downvoted comment" only to realize "hey, no, that's a question! Why does HN style it like that?".
Every time.
These arguments use whatever cudgel is nearby to make their points. Principal is not about principals, it's about proving their taste in fashion superior.