• Max-P@lemmy.max-p.me
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    9 months ago

    Just a friendly reminder that there’s accessibility problems with dark themes.

    For me dark themes look like this because I have astigmatism:

    White on black text with astigmatism

    Black on white doesn’t have this issue because all the white around it does is slightly blur into the black text and makes it a little grey at worst.

    Any dark theme for a longer period of time also causes the white text to burn in my retina for a couple minutes, and I just see lines when I look away, and also makes reading a long article difficult and painful.

    Dark themes look so much better, but keep in mind some people have very good reasons to prefer light themes. There’s no need for dark theme elitism.

    • Pantherina@feddit.deOP
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      9 months ago

      Nobody watched the video lol, dark themes are an easy fix but not the best solution. But very interesting, thanks for sharing

    • BlueÆther@no.lastname.nz
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      9 months ago

      I’m certainly not that bad, but I see where you are coming from. I like a very light grey text on a medium to dark background for this reason that white text on black ‘shadows’

    • acockworkorange@mander.xyz
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      9 months ago

      The point of the video is that current default themes (particularly light themes) are too high contrast and too monochromatic. And in that scenario, a dark theme becomes a necessity because a high contrast dark theme is usually better received than a white one.

    • CatTrickery@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      9 months ago

      If you are on Android, repainter can be really nice to find an accessible background/foreground combo using the new Material You theme engine. I get the impression it wasn’t designed for that purpose but it does the job if you try to use mostly Material You apps.

  • linuxPIPEpower@discuss.tchncs.de
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    9 months ago

    I like light themes and agree that they can be done well. Overall my problem with dark themes is they are too low contrast everything melts into everything else. Who doesn’t want a distinct border around a window?

    • Pantherina@feddit.deOP
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      9 months ago

      I think what Brodie showed at the end was already really great. I know a graphics designer and number 1 rule is to never use black and white.

      But of course this only works if you have full control over all apps, libadwaita? Dont theme my apps? Damn Electron?

  • Jegahan@lemmy.ml
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    9 months ago

    To be honest, this seems to me like a pretty bad take with weird and kind of BS arguments. Why are professional designer, both those working for some of the biggest tech companies and those working in open source project, making these choices? It couldn’t be for actual reasons or because they actually prefer it like that. No, they are “afraid of color”. Or implying that dark theme exist because of these black on white themes, as a mean to escape it. It just weird backwards logic to justify his taste and shouldn’t be necessary to just state that he prefer a different kind of themes.

    To me, the Windows themes he showed as positive examples look way to cluttered and busy, even though they don’t show this much information. I don’t need the theme to be “exiting”, I need them to display the information in an easily readable way. And dark theme aren’t there just for people who dislike the modern light theme. Having a light and a dark theme (and ideally having the app follow your system preference) actually serves a purpose. You can actively switch between them depending on the context, the time of day, the brightness of the room or any other reason to make the screen easily readable and comfortable to look at.

  • Eugenia@lemmy.ml
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    9 months ago

    I have astigmatism, so I can’t work with dark themes. I can’t read correctly when everything is black around. For me, the perfect theme is the one that has a black window manager, gray variations on specific widgets, and white windows (the background desktop image I prefer it to be blue-ish). Basically, to work properly, I need a mostly light, but mixed environment that provides contrast. Not all white, and definitely not all black. So far, I haven’t found such a theme, because no GUI environment allows for such specificity in theming for the various widgets. Although the default Gnome theme ain’t too bad.

    • Pantherina@feddit.deOP
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      9 months ago

      I tried making a KDE theme too and it either looks like that, or random parts are colored differently.

      But everything blue… haha no thanks

  • Fizz@lemmy.nz
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    9 months ago

    I might consider using a light theme if I had a nicer monitor and a clean desk.

  • perishthethought@lemm.ee
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    9 months ago

    I just refuse to watch any YT video where they make a face like this in the splash image.

    OP, if this video is yours, sorry, but not very.