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> Unfortunately, this palette does not pass WCAG[1], which seems a weird thing to not have tested for if you've made a palette intended for web UI. ...can't yo

> Unfortunately, this palette does not pass WCAG[1], which seems a weird thing to not have tested for if you've made a palette intended for web UI. ...can't you just use an accessibility extension to change the color scheme of a website? This seems like a solved problem. Extensions have been able to swap CSS for ages now.

connordoner 4y ago
Or you as a developer could just avoid alienating disabled people, who likely represent a large proportion of your target audience - whether you realise it or not?
- csande17 4y ago
  In my experience, the only people actually alienated by a failure to strictly comply with WCAG's assumptions about color contrast are the ones who run random websites through automated scanners and complain about the results. WCAG's rules allow some color combinations that are inaccessible (eg black text on a red background, which is not visible to people with protanopia) and disallow some color combinations that are fine. You really need to have actual humans with disabilities look at your website to find out if it works for them.
- Test0129 4y ago
  Or, I could be a developer burdened by developing, marketing, and promoting my product. Unable to afford the time nor the energy to dedicate a large portion of my already limited budget on such things. Fundamentally, you are correct. Practically, you are very wrong. If you've ever been in this situation, as I have, you simply do the best you can with the tools you have. Sometimes this means not doing anything at all. Is this correct? Probably not. However, no one is paying me to do it and if someone threatens to sue me over it I'll pull the code and release it under an anonymous pseudonym. At some point automated scanners that look for things like this and send mean emails about compliance, legal action, etc are just bullying not different from patent vultures. Heading down this path, while valiant, must be done carefully. Otherwise, Google/Apple/Microsoft/Amazon etc will be the only people with the budget to allow for full compliance to every possible disability that may effect the use of their product. I'm not convinced you understand just how much time and energy it takes out of actually delivering a product on a limited budget (in Nord's case free). Your use of "alienate" has venom behind it that makes me think you're implying they do this deliberately to spite people with disabilities. Occam's razor.
- Teever 4y ago
  That's like saying that we should ban spicy food and only serve plain gruel because some people are overwhelmed by spicy food.
TheRealPomax 4y ago
The burden is not on the person with accessibility needs, it's on the team that puts the website online. WCAG is hardly new, and compliance with it is a legal requirement for government/publically-funded websites (so those can't use this palette at all right now, even if they wanted to) It is not the responsibility of thousands of individuals with accessibility needs to each cobble together their own solutions on a per-website basis. That would be truly ridiculous. It's why WCAG was created: so that site owners have guidelines that they can follow, and tools they can use to check compliance. If you're designing something that you want the world to use "for interfaces", then you are on the hook for making sure it passes WCAG, too. If it's a side project that you don't intend to maintain, then sure ignore WCAG as much as you want, but that is not the case here. And, of course, you can get away with not being 100% compliant (no one can be, it's a well known limitation of WCAG) but in this case things aren't even compliant with respect to the main selling point: the palette. It's failing basic things like contrast ratios, so even people who you wouldn't even call "disabled" or "having accessibility needs" are going to have issues with this scheme (we've normalized visual disability so much that barely anyone even realizes that having glasses is literally a disability, requiring medical corrective devices) which is pretty disappointing in 2022.
- bogwog 4y ago
  I get the point you're trying to make, but isn't installing an accessibility extension or enabling accessibility features in your browser/OS the equivalent of buying your own wheelchair, crutches, glasses, etc? I don't think anyone expects every store they visit to provide a wheelchair for customers. There's also the wheelchair ramp analogy, but I don't think that's the same since web technology is already accessibility-friendly without publishers having to do anything. User agents can completely change the style of any web page, so they are effectively wheelchair accessible. I admit I don't know much about accessibility issues, so maybe there's something obvious I'm missing here?
  - faeriechangling 4y ago
    No it’s not the same, have you ever used a wheelchair or known a user? Many many adaptions have to be made to basically every building for that wheelchair to be functional. Curb cuts on sidewalks, buttons on doors, elevators everywhere. Simply “getting into a wheelchair” isn’t enough to make accessibility work, you need to fundamentally change the infrastructure. Don’t put the disabled in the position where the website itself takes extra steps just to be usable for them, old 90 year old grandma Betty with failing vision is never going to figure such things out and saying “lol just figure it out” isn’t good enough. Those extensions that repaint websites with a new color palette are ugly as crap and buggy, and anybody with the attitude their website doesn’t need to follow WCAG by default definitely hasn’t actually checked such extensions actually work. The burden of trying to make sure every such extension is compatible is dramatically harder than just making the site accessible to begin with, the entire approach is bad design, it’s harder for everybody. What you’re doing is less building a wheelchair ramp and more leaving a pile of lumber next to some stairs, building the wheelchair ramp would mean having an accessible theme be the default and maybe the OPs theme be an alternate. The analogy I would make is actually round doorknobs vs door levers/handles. If you pay attention you will notice you don’t see doorknobs on new public buildings and that’s because of issues like arthritis. Yes somebody might aesthetically prefer doorknobs but that doesn’t justify their installation in something used by the general public. It’s fine for a PRIVATE website to be as inaccessible as you want, but not a public one.

connordoner 4y ago

Or you as a developer could just avoid alienating disabled people, who likely represent a large proportion of your target audience - whether you realise it or not?

csande17 4y ago
In my experience, the only people actually alienated by a failure to strictly comply with WCAG's assumptions about color contrast are the ones who run random websites through automated scanners and complain about the results. WCAG's rules allow some color combinations that are inaccessible (eg black text on a red background, which is not visible to people with protanopia) and disallow some color combinations that are fine. You really need to have actual humans with disabilities look at your website to find out if it works for them.
Test0129 4y ago
Or, I could be a developer burdened by developing, marketing, and promoting my product. Unable to afford the time nor the energy to dedicate a large portion of my already limited budget on such things. Fundamentally, you are correct. Practically, you are very wrong. If you've ever been in this situation, as I have, you simply do the best you can with the tools you have. Sometimes this means not doing anything at all. Is this correct? Probably not. However, no one is paying me to do it and if someone threatens to sue me over it I'll pull the code and release it under an anonymous pseudonym. At some point automated scanners that look for things like this and send mean emails about compliance, legal action, etc are just bullying not different from patent vultures. Heading down this path, while valiant, must be done carefully. Otherwise, Google/Apple/Microsoft/Amazon etc will be the only people with the budget to allow for full compliance to every possible disability that may effect the use of their product. I'm not convinced you understand just how much time and energy it takes out of actually delivering a product on a limited budget (in Nord's case free). Your use of "alienate" has venom behind it that makes me think you're implying they do this deliberately to spite people with disabilities. Occam's razor.
Teever 4y ago
That's like saying that we should ban spicy food and only serve plain gruel because some people are overwhelmed by spicy food.

TheRealPomax 4y ago

The burden is not on the person with accessibility needs, it's on the team that puts the website online. WCAG is hardly new, and compliance with it is a legal requirement for government/publically-funded websites (so those can't use this palette at all right now, even if they wanted to) It is not the responsibility of thousands of individuals with accessibility needs to each cobble together their own solutions on a per-website basis. That would be truly ridiculous. It's why WCAG was created: so that site owners have guidelines that they can follow, and tools they can use to check compliance. If you're designing something that you want the world to use "for interfaces", then you are on the hook for making sure it passes WCAG, too. If it's a side project that you don't intend to maintain, then sure ignore WCAG as much as you want, but that is not the case here. And, of course, you can get away with not being 100% compliant (no one can be, it's a well known limitation of WCAG) but in this case things aren't even compliant with respect to the main selling point: the palette. It's failing basic things like contrast ratios, so even people who you wouldn't even call "disabled" or "having accessibility needs" are going to have issues with this scheme (we've normalized visual disability so much that barely anyone even realizes that having glasses is literally a disability, requiring medical corrective devices) which is pretty disappointing in 2022.

bogwog 4y ago
I get the point you're trying to make, but isn't installing an accessibility extension or enabling accessibility features in your browser/OS the equivalent of buying your own wheelchair, crutches, glasses, etc? I don't think anyone expects every store they visit to provide a wheelchair for customers. There's also the wheelchair ramp analogy, but I don't think that's the same since web technology is already accessibility-friendly without publishers having to do anything. User agents can completely change the style of any web page, so they are effectively wheelchair accessible. I admit I don't know much about accessibility issues, so maybe there's something obvious I'm missing here?
- faeriechangling 4y ago
  No it’s not the same, have you ever used a wheelchair or known a user? Many many adaptions have to be made to basically every building for that wheelchair to be functional. Curb cuts on sidewalks, buttons on doors, elevators everywhere. Simply “getting into a wheelchair” isn’t enough to make accessibility work, you need to fundamentally change the infrastructure. Don’t put the disabled in the position where the website itself takes extra steps just to be usable for them, old 90 year old grandma Betty with failing vision is never going to figure such things out and saying “lol just figure it out” isn’t good enough. Those extensions that repaint websites with a new color palette are ugly as crap and buggy, and anybody with the attitude their website doesn’t need to follow WCAG by default definitely hasn’t actually checked such extensions actually work. The burden of trying to make sure every such extension is compatible is dramatically harder than just making the site accessible to begin with, the entire approach is bad design, it’s harder for everybody. What you’re doing is less building a wheelchair ramp and more leaving a pile of lumber next to some stairs, building the wheelchair ramp would mean having an accessible theme be the default and maybe the OPs theme be an alternate. The analogy I would make is actually round doorknobs vs door levers/handles. If you pay attention you will notice you don’t see doorknobs on new public buildings and that’s because of issues like arthritis. Yes somebody might aesthetically prefer doorknobs but that doesn’t justify their installation in something used by the general public. It’s fine for a PRIVATE website to be as inaccessible as you want, but not a public one.