Ask HN: How did low contrast text become so pervasive? It seems like black on white text is now truly verboten for whatever reason on at least 70-80% of websites. can anyone explain the benefits? to me, everything looks faded out, and rather than my eyes being able to pick up the letterforms I just perceive a field of gray and have to rely on plug-ins to get easily discernible text back. |
If they ask for something outside WCAG, I say no, that doesn't meet the standards required and do not ask if they want to respect the standard.
I learned to stop asking permission to use my professional judgement when I went to a boss with an active password/login leak that was risking an important dataset and his response was "if it hasn't leaked, let's just not worry about it and leave it"
What do you know, the next morning he was informed of a leak and I was approved to fix the issue. The leak was not real, of course.
It is not necessarily relevant if you only work with private individuals and entities.
But it also isn't that much of a burden. So my take on it is just do it and then it never is a problem.
- From my experience working with designers, many have minimal understanding of WCAG and will only adjust the contrast near the end of the design phase (as in, after the client has signed-off on it) to get it within passing limits if they're told to, and only if it's easy to do without spoiling their design.
- The rules for body text are pretty simple and I'm not excusing it, but WCAG is intimidating and confusing for most I think (ask designers why they don't follow it or understand it). There's loads of rules, the documentation is verbose, and it tells you what needs to pass, but lacks guidelines on how to do this in a way that doesn't change the look of your branded designs.
- I've been in this situation as a developer a few times where I'll tell the designer what specific WCAG rules aren't being followed, and they'll not change anything because they don't know what to do without compromising their design e.g. I'll mention "your main brand color can be used for large heading text, but it doesn't contrast enough for buttons", where the options might include picking a darker brand color (a big ask), a darker color just for buttons (might look weird), or maybe black for buttons (will change the look a lot).
- It's really common for designers to pick bright/vibrant colors for the main brand color too that won't be accessible for body/button/link text, so being told they have to pick a darker color can feel like a big unfair restriction, especially when they see large brands or the designers they follow breaking the WCAG contrast rules all the time. Also, when most brand guidelines don't include contrast metrics for recommended color pairings, you can tell this hasn't been thought about much.
To help with the above, I started working on a tool to create branded color palettes, with the idea that you pick the colors for your headings, buttons, body text etc. that have accessible contrast upfront, rather than tweaking the contrast of these as an afterthought later:
On the other, there are lots of articles explaining that black on white will cause readers discomfort so recommend camouflaged light grey on dark grey, or vice versa, as better.
Some say that black on white is harsh on the eyes, but something like 10:1 should be fine.
Knowing my luck there is a setting already I just do not ...
OMG Firefox has contract control, playing with it now.
What are you meant to do when you have an existing site with a brand that has inaccessible colors for the headings, buttons, links, backgrounds, text etc.? Sometimes it's not as easy as making a few colors darker/lighter, and it's a huge ask to get the client to modify their brand for this, as well as updating the styling code everywhere.
We were pretty large, big-name online merchandise retailer. Definitely put our heels to the fire on giving the frontend a design refresh.
https://news.mobar.org/confronting-the-rise-in-ada-website-a...
Is there an of any company which was "sued into oblivion" there? The examples in your link of Netflix, Domino's and MIT are still alive and well.
Any and every good cause will attract a bunch of vultures, scammers and scavengers, including accessibility issues. But I'm not going to believe those who say that any company which isn't up to date on this will "get sued to oblivion". Not without examples that prove it.
With that said, I'm a strong supporter of Internet accessibility because there are no down-sides to it. It is essential to the people who need it, and at the same time it improves the experience of those who don't.