There's pretty much nothing in the natural world that has the contrast ratio a modern screen can produce. It is easier on the eyes to not have blindly high contrast.
No printed page in any book or magazine you've seen has ever been pure black/white contrast ratios a screen can show. It's just not possible to do.
Legibility can be an issue, and is good to discuss. I agree that when something like "@media (prefers-contrast: more)" is set, text should be at a higher contrast level for those with lower vision. But don't blind everyone else in the process.
>... the amount of times per day I ask myself if I’m literally going blind, only to find out the “designer” decided for me how I should best read their website.
Yes? That's what the designers of literally everything do, decide how it will be presented to you. The magic part of HTML/CSS is you can change that to suit your needs.
Isn'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.
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.
The background is indeed not black, but if it isn't actually white then it's close enough that the text, which i'm sure is indeed mostly actually grey rather than black, shows up well. I've seen worse.
Indeed the WCAG guidelines provide the following criteria
* The visual presentation of text and images of text has a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1, except for the following
* Large Text: Large-scale text and images of large-scale text have a contrast ratio of at least 3:1
Grey is not the problem. Low contrast is the problem.
This is why I still use the marquee tag. It catches people's attention right away! Much more so than grey text on grey background could.
I do use pink for it though, usually pink on red or yellow background.
It makes people feel more engaged and they write all sorts of happy
emails about how epic blinking pink on rainbow ponicorn background
wallpapers are. The 90s were a great time for the global internets ...
The article could have been more useful if its point was just 'use sufficient contrast'. As it is, the article is overly prescriptive, and feels like trying too hard to be sensational or cute.
But the author of that page is not concerned with readability or accessibility. He just wants things to look cool and design-y. One piece of supporting evidence he cites is some random photo he took that doesn't contain #000000 black. That doesn't mean anything, it could be that it's over-exposed, or has poor contrast, or had some silly filter applied. This leads me to think that the author of that page doesn't know what he's talking about.
So you routinely encounter photographs that have noticable areas where sensor did not receive any light during exposure? To the point where you feel not having completely unlit parts of a photo is a sign of over-exposure or filters? Are you an astrophotographer?
Wow, I was searching for this exact link for more than a decade (!). I remember seeing it on HN when I was new here and couldn't find the article ever again. Thanks for sharing!
I was reviewing a confluence page which was reviewed my many stakeholders. Something bugged me to an excruciating extent about the content of the page: something was off at some parts of the text. I inspected the page and it turns out the font color somehow changed to a mildly grayer color than black. This was likely due to a copy-and-paste that has gone wrong.
This problem has been haunting me for years, except in Google Docs. At some point, some template my team used had slightly gray text, and I STILL find it cropping up in our most recent documents.
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!
Everyone should just use something like DarkReader to make these problems go away. Web devs who fiddle with the colors are annoying, but at least they are easy to ignore.
Well, as long as you're not going to decide to make the dark background lighter to accommodate the brighter text...
But I would be in favor of sites using variables more so that personal customization is easier. But often this goes against their desire for "branding".
The number of PowerPoint and slide presentations I sat through with sans serif white and yellow text on a dark purple background still gives me nightmares. For my presentation I went black over medium-light grey. The audience sighed with relief.
Blue hyperlinks. Purple hyperlinks after you had clicked them. Images with the blue hyperlink border. Tables with Extra Chonky borders. Row and Col span. Guestbooks.
I created a ycombinator account after years of resisting, just to respond to this post.
Stop creating web pages with huge-ass gutters/margins.
If you are concerned about design you would realize your page looks ridiculous and borderline illegible on modern screens (that are not phones). Text color is an issue, but layout is worse.
They have huge gutters and margins, and not-quite-black text on creme/off-white/never-actually-white backgrounds... why? Because it's easier of the eyes for long blocks of text.
This doesn't seem too far off from ~80 characters per line, which I believe is best practice for readability. Though you could make the column wider and bump up the font size and it would be even more readable.
Screen brightness is a pretty important contributing factor. If you have this problem a lot, verify your screen is bright enough. ( Regardless of his point )
> I actually believe increasing contrast for everyone improves the information density of our content.
You used css to change the pointer. So instead of the I-Beam I had to use a regular pointer to select that text. Information density is nice but information access shouldn't be compromised either.
Aside from that, while this is true, I'd think you'd then want something better for your users than "font-family: system-ui".
Yes, 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.
While we're wishing, let's bring back serifs. I, for one, would like to be able to tell the difference between AI and Al without context clues, and using an inherently lossy font is the opposite of "readability".
There's pretty much nothing in the natural world that has the contrast ratio a modern screen can produce. It is easier on the eyes to not have blindly high contrast.
No printed page in any book or magazine you've seen has ever been pure black/white contrast ratios a screen can show. It's just not possible to do.
Legibility can be an issue, and is good to discuss. I agree that when something like "@media (prefers-contrast: more)" is set, text should be at a higher contrast level for those with lower vision. But don't blind everyone else in the process.
>... the amount of times per day I ask myself if I’m literally going blind, only to find out the “designer” decided for me how I should best read their website.
Yes? That's what the designers of literally everything do, decide how it will be presented to you. The magic part of HTML/CSS is you can change that to suit your needs.
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.
* The visual presentation of text and images of text has a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1, except for the following * Large Text: Large-scale text and images of large-scale text have a contrast ratio of at least 3:1
Grey is not the problem. Low contrast is the problem.
Next time we'll ship your Mac. No, we won't give you a new one.
I do use pink for it though, usually pink on red or yellow background. It makes people feel more engaged and they write all sorts of happy emails about how epic blinking pink on rainbow ponicorn background wallpapers are. The 90s were a great time for the global internets ...
Maximum readability for humans is black text on light grey. Contrast is not the only thing that matters.
> He just wants things to look cool and design-y
> some random photo
> That doesn't mean anything
This leads me to believe the author of this post doesn’t know what they’re talking about
What if you empower the user to control their device and use reasonable baselines that maximize legibility
Helpful of the website to demonstrate the problem in situ in its tag links and code comments! (Maybe just in dark mode?)
Just stick to ensuring WCAG 2 AA rating. If your awesome design isn’t AA there better be a good reason. If it is, everything’s fine.
But I would be in favor of sites using variables more so that personal customization is easier. But often this goes against their desire for "branding".
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.
https://www.w3.org/MarkUp/tims_editor
If you are concerned about design you would realize your page looks ridiculous and borderline illegible on modern screens (that are not phones). Text color is an issue, but layout is worse.
They have huge gutters and margins, and not-quite-black text on creme/off-white/never-actually-white backgrounds... why? Because it's easier of the eyes for long blocks of text.
We'll also add a wonderful floating text input box to let you chat with our helpful AI assistant.
Please Stop Using Grey Text (2022)
https://tangledweb.xyz/please-stop-using-grey-text-3d3e71acf... (https://archive.is/QictZ) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31420938]
You used css to change the pointer. So instead of the I-Beam I had to use a regular pointer to select that text. Information density is nice but information access shouldn't be compromised either.
Aside from that, while this is true, I'd think you'd then want something better for your users than "font-family: system-ui".
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.
https://contrastrebellion.com/
I got criticism on my blog for using a serif font but those people are just … wrong. Serif fonts are just better for reading at all font sizes.