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It's funny how the last section with the screenshots mentions "preserving accessibility". "Fixing the lightness and only modifying hue and chroma" is not a reci

by hnbad 4y ago

It's funny how the last section with the screenshots mentions "preserving accessibility". "Fixing the lightness and only modifying hue and chroma" is not a recipe for good accessibility and the screenshots demonstrate it. I'm severely green-blind and in the earlier screenshots of the Solarized palette I already hat issues telling red and orange, and blue and violet apart. But with the new palette I now struggle with red, orange AND green, and magenta and cyan also have become less distinct from each other. Solarized wasn't very accessible to begin with (few syntax highlighting color palettes are) but this is just worse. If you learn about color theory as a hobby, please also take the time to learn about color vision and before making claims about accessibility also learn about how color vision deficiencies affect perception. It's nice that the author admits they had to learn about color theory in order to approach this, i.e. they didn't know much about color before, but please don't claim this is an "improvement" if you really only tried to increase the light-dark contrast of the text against the background. Solarized is a fairly low-contrast theme to begin with and increasing its contrast while maintaining its general aesthetic would have been an interest goal but this article doesn't seem to actually be interested in doing that.

Fnoord 4y ago
Preface: I am autistic, and live in a non-autistic world. Yes, I want to be taken into account, but not by default. It can really hurt if you cannot be taken into account though. I believe a color scheme or font should not, by default, take into account color blindness or dyslexia. I mean, we could do that, but the reward would be too low compared to the cost because the amount of people with such disability is too low compared to healthy amount. Instead, users should have the option to opt for a colorblind or dyslexia color scheme or font, just like there's lifts in public space but also stairs, and its assumed most users can use the stairs (else you'd get congestion). The only exception is things like traffic signs. But given HN is an American website, I believe the US is putting emphasis on written text on traffic signs where symbols (picture language) would suffice, and improve on the matter (not just because not all speak English but more because of reading taking more effort than observing a sign, leading to errors).
- hnbad 4y ago
  I too am autistic. I don't see how that's relevant or an appropriate comparison though. Most specifically "colorblind-friendly" color schemes suck. Most "regular" color schemes are at least partially accessible to colorblindness though. My complaint is that the author claimed the changes "preserve accessibility" while objectively making the theme less accessible. If the colors are indistinguishable in greyscale, that is not a good thing. Heck, there's not even one true way to determine what the "greyscale equivalent" of a given color is. The author's initial complaint was that Solarized doesn't have enough light-dark contrast between the text and the background and took a stab at solving this after reading a little bit about color theory. Don't get me wrong, this is an interesting hack (which makes this relevant for HN) but my concern is with the author making misleading accessibility claims and calling it an "optimized" or "improved" theme (to the point that others have commented they are downloading and using it themselves) while clearly demonstrating a lack of understanding of accessibility and admitting to having a very limited knowledge of "color theory". Specifically, there was no need to homogenize the colors like this in order to increase the light-dark contrast of the theme. Even from a design aspect alone it made the theme blander, less interesting. The author lacks the knowledge to understand what makes the theme work, so how can they claim they have improved upon it? Again, it's an interesting hack and a fun creative exercise and the result may even serve the author's and others' needs. But neither did it "preserve accessibility", nor did it "improve" nor "optimize" the theme. Your argument seems to be that restricting color palettes to make them more accessible by default limits creative choices, but my point is that arbitrarily pinning the lightness as an amateur attempt at improving light-dark contrast has this exact same effect (i.e. making the result less interesting) while additionally making the result less accessible.
  - zacharyvoase 4y ago
    Could you post a link to the color scheme that you made?
zacharyvoase 4y ago
For someone with dichromacy, I would recommend using a color scheme specifically designed for your particular variant of color blindness. It would be pretty easy to re-orient the hues of the accent colors around the two primaries you can perceive, but optimizing for deuteranopia and protanopia would make it worse for people with tritanopia, so I didn't try to solve that problem. I'm sorry it didn't work for you, and hope your strategy of complaining about stuff people made for free pays off in the future, although I have my doubts. And for what it's worth, I ran this color scheme through filters simulating deuteranopia, protanopia, and tritanopia, and actually coded in them for at least a couple of hours each to see what it was like, and I personally preferred a consistent minimum foreground/background contrast over distinguishability between the accent hues.

by hnbad 4y ago

Fnoord 4y ago

Preface: I am autistic, and live in a non-autistic world. Yes, I want to be taken into account, but not by default. It can really hurt if you cannot be taken into account though. I believe a color scheme or font should not, by default, take into account color blindness or dyslexia. I mean, we could do that, but the reward would be too low compared to the cost because the amount of people with such disability is too low compared to healthy amount. Instead, users should have the option to opt for a colorblind or dyslexia color scheme or font, just like there's lifts in public space but also stairs, and its assumed most users can use the stairs (else you'd get congestion). The only exception is things like traffic signs. But given HN is an American website, I believe the US is putting emphasis on written text on traffic signs where symbols (picture language) would suffice, and improve on the matter (not just because not all speak English but more because of reading taking more effort than observing a sign, leading to errors).

hnbad 4y ago
I too am autistic. I don't see how that's relevant or an appropriate comparison though. Most specifically "colorblind-friendly" color schemes suck. Most "regular" color schemes are at least partially accessible to colorblindness though. My complaint is that the author claimed the changes "preserve accessibility" while objectively making the theme less accessible. If the colors are indistinguishable in greyscale, that is not a good thing. Heck, there's not even one true way to determine what the "greyscale equivalent" of a given color is. The author's initial complaint was that Solarized doesn't have enough light-dark contrast between the text and the background and took a stab at solving this after reading a little bit about color theory. Don't get me wrong, this is an interesting hack (which makes this relevant for HN) but my concern is with the author making misleading accessibility claims and calling it an "optimized" or "improved" theme (to the point that others have commented they are downloading and using it themselves) while clearly demonstrating a lack of understanding of accessibility and admitting to having a very limited knowledge of "color theory". Specifically, there was no need to homogenize the colors like this in order to increase the light-dark contrast of the theme. Even from a design aspect alone it made the theme blander, less interesting. The author lacks the knowledge to understand what makes the theme work, so how can they claim they have improved upon it? Again, it's an interesting hack and a fun creative exercise and the result may even serve the author's and others' needs. But neither did it "preserve accessibility", nor did it "improve" nor "optimize" the theme. Your argument seems to be that restricting color palettes to make them more accessible by default limits creative choices, but my point is that arbitrarily pinning the lightness as an amateur attempt at improving light-dark contrast has this exact same effect (i.e. making the result less interesting) while additionally making the result less accessible.
- zacharyvoase 4y ago
  Could you post a link to the color scheme that you made?

zacharyvoase 4y ago

For someone with dichromacy, I would recommend using a color scheme specifically designed for your particular variant of color blindness. It would be pretty easy to re-orient the hues of the accent colors around the two primaries you can perceive, but optimizing for deuteranopia and protanopia would make it worse for people with tritanopia, so I didn't try to solve that problem. I'm sorry it didn't work for you, and hope your strategy of complaining about stuff people made for free pays off in the future, although I have my doubts. And for what it's worth, I ran this color scheme through filters simulating deuteranopia, protanopia, and tritanopia, and actually coded in them for at least a couple of hours each to see what it was like, and I personally preferred a consistent minimum foreground/background contrast over distinguishability between the accent hues.