Re:Please Stop Using Grey Text
by account42 on Thursday May 19, 2022 @04:07AM
(#31431984)
> Almost all technology of any kind selects in favor of aesthetics over equal access.
I don't think accessibility should mean that you have to forgoe aesthetics or compactness for those users that don't need the contrast or extra space or whatever so these don't need to be opposed. Instead, provide options for users that do need them and/or integrate with OS or third-party accessibility tools where possible.
> Why can’t I choose the colors of web sites and applications?
I can choose my applications colors under KDE and pretty much everything "native" (Qt and GTK <= 3 apps) will respect those settings. This seems more of a problem in the proprietary ecosystem where each company wants to insist on their own branding.
For websites there are prefers-contrast [0] and prefers-color-scheme [1] media queries that in theory provide some user configurability but they are a) barely exposed to users b) not implemented by most websites and c) very limited. It would be nice if there was a standard way for CSS to refer to system fonts and colors - then again that would also be yet another privacy leak that WILL be used for tracking :|
> Why can’t I change the default system font for my iPhone or my Mac?
You can in other operating systems. Apple has always been about aesthetics first so this this shouldn't really be suprising - not that that excuses Apple from not providing these configuration options.
> Why can’t I change the font size in modern video games?
This has actually become more common for CRPGs now. I guess most less text-heavy games still don't bother. OTOH most new-ish games scale text with the screen resolution. Older games might have fixed absolute font sizes but if they are old enough they also have a fixed (or limited set of) supported resolutions and you need to scale up the whole thing anyway.
> Why do most desktop applications fall of the edge of the screen below 1080p?
Windows is really bad about having fixed-size dialogs everywhere. This is another of those things I like about Qt-based applications - they have always had flexible layouts unless the developer deliberately breaks that.
I don't think accessibility should mean that you have to forgoe aesthetics or compactness for those users that don't need the contrast or extra space or whatever so these don't need to be opposed. Instead, provide options for users that do need them and/or integrate with OS or third-party accessibility tools where possible.
> Why can’t I choose the colors of web sites and applications?
I can choose my applications colors under KDE and pretty much everything "native" (Qt and GTK <= 3 apps) will respect those settings. This seems more of a problem in the proprietary ecosystem where each company wants to insist on their own branding.
For websites there are prefers-contrast [0] and prefers-color-scheme [1] media queries that in theory provide some user configurability but they are a) barely exposed to users b) not implemented by most websites and c) very limited. It would be nice if there was a standard way for CSS to refer to system fonts and colors - then again that would also be yet another privacy leak that WILL be used for tracking :|
> Why can’t I change the default system font for my iPhone or my Mac?
You can in other operating systems. Apple has always been about aesthetics first so this this shouldn't really be suprising - not that that excuses Apple from not providing these configuration options.
> Why can’t I change the font size in modern video games?
This has actually become more common for CRPGs now. I guess most less text-heavy games still don't bother. OTOH most new-ish games scale text with the screen resolution. Older games might have fixed absolute font sizes but if they are old enough they also have a fixed (or limited set of) supported resolutions and you need to scale up the whole thing anyway.
> Why do most desktop applications fall of the edge of the screen below 1080p?
Windows is really bad about having fixed-size dialogs everywhere. This is another of those things I like about Qt-based applications - they have always had flexible layouts unless the developer deliberately breaks that.
[0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@media/pref... [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@media/pref...