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> I'm sorry, it's my fault I assume you're being sarcastic here. Accessibility issues like this are clearly the fault of an industry that hires mostly twenty-s

> I'm sorry, it's my fault I assume you're being sarcastic here. Accessibility issues like this are clearly the fault of an industry that hires mostly twenty-somethings with perfect vision, then doesn't train them in this important area. And really, why does every app need its own theme or color scheme anyway? Sure, each company likes having its own brand. But do the users like this? I think that every app using the OS-supplied theme is good not just for accessibility, but for a consistent, distraction-free user experience. But then, I'm visually impaired myself, so that skews my perception, and I probably don't understand what the sighted masses like.

mwcampbell 8y ago
As I think about it, I think part of the problem is that so many young developers with no industry experience rush to start startups. How can they not keep repeating the same mistakes, including no regard for accessibility? They think they're doing a good thing by avoiding all the bureaucratic bullshit and moving fast. And indeed, accessibility often falls under "compliance" at big companies, which gives it that boring, bureaucratic feel. But it matters. People can lose their jobs, or at least be severely hampered in their productivity, when it's ignored. Maybe we need to encourage young developers to spend some time at a mature software company before starting their own. Edit: I made the same mistake myself. While I was still in college, I became sole developer for a tiny company that developed software for blind people. So I was obviously hyper-aware of accessibility for that user base. But I was ignorant of other important considerations, like internationalization, security, corporate manageability (working well with Windows Group Policy and the like), and even accessibility for other disabilities.
- misterhtmlcss 8y ago
  I don't think that's a reasonable comment. Any business first needs to address a marketplace that's enough to sustain itself and assure it's future existence. Beer chased men because more men drank, then when more woman started to drink it they started advertising to it. While that's perhaps a different example due to one group not being actually excluded from something it shows how business behaves. Then you consider the risk of staying a startup to your future, your retirement, the funders cash/investment and honestly I'd you spent a dime on accessibility at this stage it would be reckless behavior. Now having said that, once a product mix and the positive trajectory path has been established, then I don't think it's reasonable to delay, not even to say 'wait until we are profitable', because at that point you need to start addressing access to everyone equally as part of your business and if your business cannot sustain itself being inclusive then it's best to establish that earlier than later IMO. Ps. I'm in no way poo pooing your point about the needing to be more training around accessibility, because ultimately that's part of the meat and potatoes of bring a dev. Like knowing SQL, JS, etc. All part of the basic skills we all need to survive most days at work. And accessibility is in the group. I'm only saying that a startup needs to first determine demand for it's product with the largest addressable group in it's core target audience, then branching out should immediately include accessibility IMO.
wishinghand 8y ago
Thousands of users love dark themes. I’m eagerly awaiting the MacOS dark theme, I’ve hacked Slack to be dark and I run a Firefox extension that turns light colors dark grey and black text white (though I’d prefer an off-white with some red hue). However, like the grandpa comment says- it’s an accessibility issue. There ought to be both or have option to customize the primary, secondary, accent, background, and text colors.
- mwcampbell 8y ago
  > Thousands of users love dark themes. Definitely. I wonder if the whole problem here is that macOS took so long to get one, so developers have taken it upon themselves to do their own, and then some assumed that everybody wants a dark theme.
DonHopkins 8y ago
You actually have to pay money to subscribe to Unity3D Pro to get the dark color scheme -- it's disabled in the free version. And people actually seem to care passionately about it, on both sides of the issue, for many different reasons! https://feedback.unity3d.com/suggestions/editor-dark-skin-theme-in-free- https://feedback.unity3d.com/suggestions/editor-dark-skin-th... https://forum.unity.com/threads/dark-theme-pro-only-seriously.488516/ https://forum.unity.com/threads/dark-theme-pro-only-seriousl...
- greglindahl 8y ago
  I care passionately that my personal preferences about light/dark shouldn’t be forced on other people with different preferences.
  - DonHopkins 8y ago
    And other people act like pixels are a zero sum game, so when one pixel lightens, another darkens. And then you have the extremely low contrast people who want to redistribute all the brightness.
- Stratoscope 8y ago
  I was doing a lot of Unity VR work a few years ago and was amused a few times when people saw that I was using their light theme and asked, "I thought you had Unity Pro?" The funny thing about Unity's dark theme is that it is not only a dark theme, but it has much lower text vs. background contrast than their light theme. And the light theme is rather low contrast already. Combined with their failure to support high-DPI displays, this led to a rather unpleasant experience. The only thing that made it palatable was that most of the time I was writing code in Visual Studio and not in the Unity Editor.

mwcampbell 8y ago

As I think about it, I think part of the problem is that so many young developers with no industry experience rush to start startups. How can they not keep repeating the same mistakes, including no regard for accessibility? They think they're doing a good thing by avoiding all the bureaucratic bullshit and moving fast. And indeed, accessibility often falls under "compliance" at big companies, which gives it that boring, bureaucratic feel. But it matters. People can lose their jobs, or at least be severely hampered in their productivity, when it's ignored. Maybe we need to encourage young developers to spend some time at a mature software company before starting their own. Edit: I made the same mistake myself. While I was still in college, I became sole developer for a tiny company that developed software for blind people. So I was obviously hyper-aware of accessibility for that user base. But I was ignorant of other important considerations, like internationalization, security, corporate manageability (working well with Windows Group Policy and the like), and even accessibility for other disabilities.

misterhtmlcss 8y ago
I don't think that's a reasonable comment. Any business first needs to address a marketplace that's enough to sustain itself and assure it's future existence. Beer chased men because more men drank, then when more woman started to drink it they started advertising to it. While that's perhaps a different example due to one group not being actually excluded from something it shows how business behaves. Then you consider the risk of staying a startup to your future, your retirement, the funders cash/investment and honestly I'd you spent a dime on accessibility at this stage it would be reckless behavior. Now having said that, once a product mix and the positive trajectory path has been established, then I don't think it's reasonable to delay, not even to say 'wait until we are profitable', because at that point you need to start addressing access to everyone equally as part of your business and if your business cannot sustain itself being inclusive then it's best to establish that earlier than later IMO. Ps. I'm in no way poo pooing your point about the needing to be more training around accessibility, because ultimately that's part of the meat and potatoes of bring a dev. Like knowing SQL, JS, etc. All part of the basic skills we all need to survive most days at work. And accessibility is in the group. I'm only saying that a startup needs to first determine demand for it's product with the largest addressable group in it's core target audience, then branching out should immediately include accessibility IMO.

wishinghand 8y ago

Thousands of users love dark themes. I’m eagerly awaiting the MacOS dark theme, I’ve hacked Slack to be dark and I run a Firefox extension that turns light colors dark grey and black text white (though I’d prefer an off-white with some red hue). However, like the grandpa comment says- it’s an accessibility issue. There ought to be both or have option to customize the primary, secondary, accent, background, and text colors.

mwcampbell 8y ago
> Thousands of users love dark themes. Definitely. I wonder if the whole problem here is that macOS took so long to get one, so developers have taken it upon themselves to do their own, and then some assumed that everybody wants a dark theme.

DonHopkins 8y ago

You actually have to pay money to subscribe to Unity3D Pro to get the dark color scheme -- it's disabled in the free version. And people actually seem to care passionately about it, on both sides of the issue, for many different reasons! https://feedback.unity3d.com/suggestions/editor-dark-skin-theme-in-free- https://feedback.unity3d.com/suggestions/editor-dark-skin-th... https://forum.unity.com/threads/dark-theme-pro-only-seriously.488516/ https://forum.unity.com/threads/dark-theme-pro-only-seriousl...

greglindahl 8y ago
I care passionately that my personal preferences about light/dark shouldn’t be forced on other people with different preferences.
- DonHopkins 8y ago
  And other people act like pixels are a zero sum game, so when one pixel lightens, another darkens. And then you have the extremely low contrast people who want to redistribute all the brightness.
Stratoscope 8y ago
I was doing a lot of Unity VR work a few years ago and was amused a few times when people saw that I was using their light theme and asked, "I thought you had Unity Pro?" The funny thing about Unity's dark theme is that it is not only a dark theme, but it has much lower text vs. background contrast than their light theme. And the light theme is rather low contrast already. Combined with their failure to support high-DPI displays, this led to a rather unpleasant experience. The only thing that made it palatable was that most of the time I was writing code in Visual Studio and not in the Unity Editor.