Increasing text contrast

Dominion

Ah, I hadn't thought about that.

The homepage looks really great, by the way!

Henry

One thought I had: it also could depend on the quality of the monitor for the user how rich some texts appear. For example, if I am looking at a commit on GitHub, my older LED monitor renders the green very faintly. Whereas, on my newer LED IPS monitor the green is very rich and easy to see. Now, when I look at commits on the older screen I feel like I can barely make out the green half the time. I wonder if something similar is happening for the user.

Here's a picture illustrating the different contrasts I see of Flarum on these two monitors.

http://imgur.com/QJcTKRH
http://imgur.com/BDRMngR (GitHub commit for reference)

Edit: lol, so I just noticed if I look at these on the LED monitor... I don't see a difference. -_-

Dominion

That's a good point. There may be a limit to the benefits of fine-tuning (a point of diminishing returns, if you like), when the quality of the user's monitor (not to mention the degree to which it's been properly adjusted) can have an even greater impact.

RonnyO

Although it's elegant and all, contrast isn't about personal taste - There are established guidelines for contrast (which in some countries are backed by law) in order to make sure pages are accessible. Being able to tweak colors isn't enough - The default settings are used in most cases, so when designing a default theme for new software it's important to get this right.

sestir

RonnyO Would making the faded text bold where it is important help satisfy the legal requirements?

Dominion

RonnyO There are established guidelines for contrast (which in some countries are backed by law) in order to make sure pages are accessible.

That's not surprising, but I think Flarum in its present state is more contrasty than the some elements of the current iOS interface. You'd think we'd hear about it if that had caused legal troubles for Apple...

Of course, iOS does have the built-in inverted colors accessibility setting. I didn't find that setting much made much of an improvement to visibility, but it is what made me think of suggesting something similar for Flarum.

RonnyO

Don't know, need to dive further into the requirements and how much effect font weight has, but I don't think the current state is even close to passing so my guess is no, the change should be more noticeable. And don't think about the law/some certificate, think of users with imperfect eyesight, bad screens, bad lightning conditions and so on.

Franz

RonnyO I don't think the current state is even close to passing

You can use this handy tool for testing - it even suggests improvements.

Toby

I'm hesitant to include a "high-contrast" theme/mode. I'd rather put in the work to make the default theme satisfy (or get closer to satisfying) the guidelines.

I've made an issue for this. Hopefully during the week I'll have a play and apply changes live to this forum, and then we can use this thread for feedback.

tarun

Toby work to make the default theme satisfy (or get closer to satisfying) the guidelines

I think you may be going down the wrong route with this decision - try and make it lighter, and you'll make the interface heavy for those who are okay with those light greys. Keep it light, and there will be those who have an accessibility issue. I personally like things the way they are now - the interface is light and approachable as a result of this.

I'd suggest keeping things as is, and letting someone develop a high contrast theme or a list of CSS Overrides for the default one.. that way both camps have the opportunity to be served well.

henshaw

Toby we chose to make a high-contrast theme for our software when we launched a new design several years ago. It was a mistake. The best solution ended up being what you suggested, "put in the work to make the default theme satisfy (or get closer to satisfying) the guidelines."

Franz

tarun I'd suggest keeping things as is, and letting someone develop a high contrast theme or a list of CSS Overrides for the default one.. that way both camps have the opportunity to be served well.

That's true, but I'd argue it should be the other way around. Accessibility should be the default. There are enough other things that are hard for visually impaired people.

tarun

Franz You have a very empathetic thought for us to consider. I too wish to see Flarum serving those who are visually impaired, and being the forum platform that adds excitement to their lives, just like it is adding to mine. I have a few thoughts on how we could achieve this.

Accessibility is a vast mission as the needs of those who find accessibility important will greatly differ from those of the usual user. If we average out our decisions to serve both camps, we may end up underserving both and creating less opinionated and exciting software. I feel that Flarum's current thought DNA is well poised to travel around the world and one day, excite a professional in the accessibility domain to join forces with us to give that mission its due diligence.

In the interim, to serve and excite as many as we can, we could use "accessibility overrides". We could keep them as an optional feature for themes, based on a set of accessibility guidelines we put up on the Flarum Developer website. This way, if the original theme developer doesn't work on the over-rides, it would be easy for somebody else in the community to implement it and share. The user, at the time of registration, could then be asked if they would like to apply those over rides to make things more contrasty/bigger etc as decided by the theme creator. The registration screen could be specially designed to be highly accessible - compatible with screen readers, bigger fonts, high contrast etc. Apple does this in a way by asking about preferred font size when you configure an iOS device for the first time.

I'm arguing for this default because I feel most of the users of Flarum would be excited by how you are currently using contrasts. I dare say the user interface is one of the most novel, and exciting features of Flarum as compared to other forums I have seen till date.

Dominion

I like the idea of having a checkbox in the installer that will set the forum to use accessibility options from day one.

Added after a couple moments' thought:

... Since my wife has been suffering from cataracts for the past few years, and my own eyesight has started to get a bit worse, I do understand the need to make things accessible to the visually impaired.

But I don't feel that should stop us trying to make Flarum as appealing and readable as possible to the majority of the public. I think it's enough to (1) make accessibility options available, and (2) make sure that those accessibility options themselves are easily accessible.

It's one thing to mandate wheelchair ramps, and quite another to say we should stop building stairs altogether...

syntactile

If for some reason it isn't feasible to satisfy contrast requirements in the default theme, any accessibility setting needs to be user facing and pretty obvious. The web doesn't work like public infrastructure -- nobody's going to come by and say "You've got to build a ramp here." so if you don't make the ramp default you have to give the visitor control of whether there's a ramp or not. Owners/admins seldom have incentive and often lack the discretion to know better.

Toby

OK, I've darkened the muted color on this forum. We're sitting on a 3.6:1 contrast ratio, whereas before it was 2.72:1. It still doesn't quite pass the WCAG requirement for normal text (4.5:1) but it is a lot better. I like this, but I'm hesitant to go much darker as the text becomes too prominent. Thoughts?

henshaw

Toby also, people with severe contrast issues have difficulty with a lot of websites. Fortunately, there are plugins for browsers that will enhance their browsing experience. Here's an example of one viewing this thread in Chrome. So finding a good balance for most people seems reasonable, and those with severe issues can (and probably already do) use a high contrast plugin.

High Contrast

Dominion

That's a good point, and something I've been wondering about.

I haven't yet gotten to the point where I've had to think about playing with my Mac's accessibility features, but it seems to me that there should be something in that toolkit that would help.

henshaw

Dominion exactly. There should be OS based accessibility features in addition to 3rd party browser plugins. And like I said before, I can't imagine someone with severe contrast issues not already using one or both. I know I would be.

Toby

Another update: The darker muted text does make the discussion list quite noisy, so I'm trying out making it lighter in that instance, and increasing the contrast on hover.

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