
The Contrast Rebellion - jansho
http://contrastrebellion.com/
======
a3n
> When making the contrast of the text lower and lower... designers need to
> think of

> elderly users with bad vision

> low quality monitors

> bad lighting and glare

> reading on tiny screens

And easily pissed off curmudgeons like myself. I immediately hit "No Styles"
at the slightest visual irritation; low contrast is the most common. I'll do
this many times in a day, with a satisfied, grumbled "harumph."

I suppose that I, a mere reader/user, am at the end of the line of
stakeholders, with the purchasing/contracting manager at the front, and I
suppose "oooh" helps get a lot of contracts signed. So good for you, I wish
you well, and it's easy enough to erase all your hard work and go directly to
1992 black text on white with obvious blue/purple links.

You can do this in Firefox as: View/Page Style/No Style.

My favorite Firefox addon, making it one click: Disable Style Button
[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/disable-
style...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/disable-style-
button/?src=search)

I enjoy a nicely styled, pleasant site, but I only read about 80% of them as-
is.

~~~
phantom_package
I'm curious how well this works. A big part of design (aside from visual
pleasantness) is information hierarchy, in which layout
(order/spacing/size/etc) of various pieces of content is manipulated (via css)
for emphasis (or deemphasis).

When you turn off all the styles, you're still getting an information
hierarchy (top to bottom) - but it's now being determined by the order of html
elements on the page, not the layout the designer used css to achieve. These
hierarchies were probably the same on the early-web, but not so much these
days.

~~~
a3n
Before my reply, a request to designers: please arrange your elements so that
they make sense when viewed without styles, for curmudgeons like me, _and_ for
people who use text browsers and visual assist tools. Important content first,
and sidebars and ads last, would be great.

Reply: It works better than leaving the site as-is, in an unreadable or
annoying state.

This happens most often, believe it or not, with news outlets (sorry, can't
think of one). What you get is an incredibly long page, with the content
usually somewhere in the middle, preceded and followed by multiple instances
of links to the same other stories. It's not that hard to just grab the mouse
and zoom the scroll bar down to what looks most obviously like what you're
looking for: a bunch of unmolested text paragraphs.

With "private" sites like personal blogs and whatnot, the result of hitting
the no styles button is the same, but usually the useless before and after
matter is not as long.

I really don't have a problem doing that, and once I get to unmolested content
I almost always enjoy it or find it useful. It's better than bailing, most of
the time, and there doesn't seem to be any correlation between "this site
sucks for me visually" and the quality of the actual content. So it's usually
worth giving it a try.

EDIT: >A big part of design (aside from visual pleasantness) is information
hierarchy, ...

This is virtually _never_ important to me, because I virtually never get to
anyone's page from their front page. I got to your page through someone else's
aggregation. HN obviously. The NYT front page (hold on, hold on :) is just an
aggregator of links to their stories, and the front page looks nothing like
the story pages. Google news is an aggregator to pages within other outlets'
aggregations.

I virtually always ignore virtually everything on a page that's not the
content I came to read, and nothing on any of the site's other pages helped me
get there, because I was never there. Someone else must have been there for
the HN link to exist, and maybe (or maybe not) the ephemera helped them make a
link for me. But it wasn't me.

Why do I not visit Art of Manliness, or some software blog, regularly? Because
they rarely post anything I care about, certainly not often enough for me to
gamble my time that maybe, this time, I'll find something worth reading.
Investors use OPM, Other Peoples' Money, to make money. I use OPT, Other
Peoples' Time, to find content worth reading on the web, and I'm as
unapologetic as investors for that.

Mmmm, coffee ...

~~~
funnyfacts365
Dude, he was talking about page content hierarchy, not the whole website
hierarchy... You could've saved a couple paragraphs of ranting right there.
SMH

~~~
a3n
Yes, he was talking about page content hierarchy. There are two kinds of
content on a page: what I came there to read (like this comment), and
everything else. Everything else is dedicated to helping me find my way to
somewhere else. My point was that I don't read everything else, and so it
doesn't help _me_ (I know, it's a me-specific rant, but maybe I'm not the only
one) no matter what page it's on; maybe it's not as important as what a
particular page is about, and so the most important elements should be at the
top (of all the pages).

> SMH

Sydney Morning Herald? G'day mate!

------
kbutler
It's a pretty common design meme to "not use pure black" (e.g.,
[https://ianstormtaylor.com/design-tip-never-use-
black/](https://ianstormtaylor.com/design-tip-never-use-black/)) or "not use
pure white".

What these designers appear not to realize, is that you are going to be
viewing these designs on a light-emitting device, or at least a light-
reflecting surface. None of these can actually produce a "pure black" (which
would be no light at all) or "pure white". Even NASA only gets close:
[https://www.nasa.gov/topics/technology/features/super-
black-...](https://www.nasa.gov/topics/technology/features/super-black-
material.html)

So designers can say that #000 is too dark, or that #fff is too light, but
calling them pure black or pure white, is just inaccurate.

------
chris_st
Man, I wish presenters at conferences would learn this.

Really, just that they'd learn that the contrast _range_ on their laptop is
huge compared to the contrast range on the projector that everyone else is
looking at, especially when you're far from the screen.

Surprisingly (to me) I saw really-light-blue-text-on-white as well as the
hipster-dark-colors-on-black at the last conference I was at. Neither was
legible...

------
pmoriarty
This is one of the many reasons I prefer to surf the web through emacs-w3m, in
my terminal. All the cute design crap is removed, and I'm given direct access
to pure information, functionally displayed. Unfortunately it doesn't work
with Javascript, so some sites don't work. But surprisingly many (including HN
and Wikipedia) do.

------
SerLava
I've still never figured out why Hacker News gradually turns down the contrast
when something gets downvoted. It's the worst possible way to represent it.
Absolutely frustrating.

Even though downvoted comments usually are inflammatory, sometimes I want to
read the damn thing so that the rebuttals make sense.

And then _every_ Ask HN is low-contrast. Why?

~~~
Jare
I personally like the progressive unreadability of downvoted posts, the
semantics are perfect. If for some reason I'm curious about what they say
(normally triggered by some answer) then I do the mouse select thing to read
them.

The Ask HN makes no sense.

~~~
alanh
I think the semantics are good too, but it is still problematic. And note that
selecting doesn’t really enhance contrast on Macs.

------
CalChris
Solarized [1] is a contrast offender. There are things that I like about
Solarized especially having a consistent palette across applications. But
reducing contrast, especially for comments, leads to eyestrain. His 'content
tones' are all reduced contrast with respect to background, between 45-65 L*.
And his background black isn't 0 and I'm not sure why.

[1]
[http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized](http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized)

------
dasil003
Good to see the date on this is 2011, because back then low-contrast was a
major design trend. These days? It still happens, but it's nothing like it
was.

------
userbinator
My long-standing theory on why this started is because the default
brightness/contrast on monitors is usually far too high for the average
environment --- they may look great sitting on the (often also brightly-lit)
store shelf, but are eye-wateringly unbearable in the typical office or home.
Thus designers started reducing contrast in a sort of software workaround to
what is actually a hardware problem, and those of us who adjust our displays
for more comfortable viewing get unreadably low contrast.

My monitors are set to only 12% contrast/10% brightness on one and 20/30 on
the (slightly older) other to compensate for wear, and it's plenty enough.
It's also probably better for longevity to not be driving the backlight at
full intensity.

------
eweise
The no contrast movement has hit restaurant menus. Between the lighting and
the menu, there is just no hope in reading them if I forget reading glasses.

------
OliverJones
Yes. What they are saying. Please. Also, print and physical media that's low
contrast and/or tiny in size is stupid.

Most internet-of-things devices, most BD players, TVs, monitors, etc, I'm
looking at you, or at least trying to.

Lots of hipster-era print pieces, I'm trying to look at you too.

Also, let me throw in the point that blue-on-black, or yellow-on-white,
contrast is hostile to the human visual system, especially in low light. The
human eyes' lenses have a smaller circle of confusion (optical jargon) for
longer wavelength light. Blue emergency lights on cop cars: couldn't be worse
for visibility and dark adaption if they tried. Red please!

------
mrob
Despite claiming to promote high contrast text, this website is medium
contrast at best. Their "black" text is #191919, not #000000 as it should be.
Printer toner and carbon black based inks are frequently darker than #000000
on a typical screen, and nobody complains about them being too dark.

In the case of white being darker than #ffffff, you can at least argue that
most users have their monitors configured too bright (it's too bright by
default because that looks better for a short term comparison, and most people
don't change the defaults), so darker whites are compensating for that.
There's no good reason to make black text gray.

~~~
lnanek2
I agree and prefer black blacks. It's very common in design books to say
that's an absolute no-no, however. So graphics people must think it looks
better somehow.

~~~
mallaidh
Funny how that changes all of a sudden, with the whole history of printing
being an effort to get as close as possible to perfectly black ink on
perfectly white paper.

------
metasean
I find these tools to be really useful in evaluating designs and emphasizing
to stakeholders where designs fall according to standards:

\- [http://www.checkmycolours.com/](http://www.checkmycolours.com/)

\-
[https://snook.ca/technical/colour_contrast/colour.html#fg=33...](https://snook.ca/technical/colour_contrast/colour.html#fg=33FF33,bg=333333)

\---

edit: adding extra lines to get proper line breaks

~~~
thinkxl
Some more:

\-
[http://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/](http://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/)
(great tool)

\- [https://24ways.org/2012/colour-
accessibility/](https://24ways.org/2012/colour-accessibility/)

\- [https://www.viget.com/articles/color-
contrast](https://www.viget.com/articles/color-contrast)

------
justin_vanw
I found this site to hurt my eyes and left me with really bad after images.
It's dusk here and I haven't turned the lights on yet, maybe that is why, but
I really prefer mild contrast when reading or I end up having striped after
images and floaters become very noticeable.

Maybe the nice looking sites aren't so bad, and people who disagree can just
override the settings (very easy in browsers), like has been possible since
windows 3.1.

~~~
jansho
I'm mostly in the high contrast camp but in low lighting situations, I have to
agree with you. I hit the "Night Shift" button on my iPhone, or flux when on
laptop.

[https://justgetflux.com/](https://justgetflux.com/)

------
alanfranzoni
Ironically,i find that website slightly unreadable because of very small text
font.

~~~
stared
Text fonts can be easily fixed with [Ctrl/Cmd]+[+]. There is similarly easy
move for contrast.

~~~
lgas
What is it, please?

I've googled and found nothing (except for Chrome Plugins that offer to do the
same thing, issue trackers for adding high contrast mode to ChromeOS, etc).

------
singularity2001
... then what.

I tried to click "Join the Rebellion!"

Nothing happened.

maybe they should start the “Unclickable link revolution”

------
angersock
If you don't like low-contrast, perhaps check out jwz.org or angersock.com

------
dzhiurgis
Somewhat ironically this page has awful scrolling performance...

------
ensiferum
and what good is that page when the font size is unreadably small?

------
woodandsteel
This is one reason I love Firefox's Reader View button.

------
z3t4
you should design to make the content digestive. but if the content is bad you
can make it look good and it will still sell.

------
loxias
This is not a "rebellion".

This is common sense. :)

