@naipotato also desperately pleading for anyone who does bother doing a light theme to check the contrast ratios against basic accessibility guidelines because holy fuck so many of them have terrible contrast that its makes it somehow more difficult to read because its light grey against a white/light background

discord is especially bad for this but also mastodon honestly aint too hot on it either aaaaa i hate it

@naipotato

Thank you for this information. I have astigmatism (severe in the left eye, moderate in the right eye) and I use only light mode on my computer and phone. I thought it was just a personal preference but now I realize that it is physiological as well.

@naipotato just as an extra data point: my astigmatism is much more sensitive to bright mode, so I exclusively use true dark mode (background colour #000000).

So please don’t just support bright mode either.

(Incidentally, please don’t do those too-bright not-really-dark modes with nōn-black background colours, or at least offer a true dark mode as an option. For contrast reasons, the text colour to go with that is #AAAAAA and not #FFFFFF.)

@naipotato and there's those like me who've had lens implants for whom white mode is painful.

Don't force either! We should not have to load suspicious plugins to force dark/light override of the OS setting.

@naipotato I was struggling with dark mode on mastodon for a long time until I realized I had a much better time browsing it in light mode, and in retrospect the reason for that is probably my astigmatism.

I know I have that but I don't usually think about it cus with glasses it's not too much of an issue in most other contexts.

@naipotato idk, my website currently is pure css and html, zero js

and I haven't gotten around to making the css modular enough that it can do the funny automatic selecting light/dark by user preference thing just yet

@naipotato infamously a dark mode enjoyer myself and. yeah. browsers support prefers-color-scheme for a reason, and desktop ui toolkits can definitely read that same preference information if you're using one of those

really pissed me off when discord decided to remove their light mode as a wacky april fool a couple years back

that is an accessibility feature you're hilariously taking away from people who need it

(also discord's light theme has pretty awful contrast even when it isn't being switched off for the lulz??? do people not test these things)

@naipotato Hey, I have astigmatism too, and I found two things which makes life way more easier.

First one is having the correct angle for your lenses. Many doctors prescribe lenses at 30/150, and this is not always the case for everybody (My lenses are at 35/145 degrees). Second one is blue light blocking lenses. It reduces fatigue too much, and when combined with the correct lenses, "halation" is almost eliminated.

This is not to discount your experience though. Just wanted to add a tip!

@naipotato Even as someone who regularly prefers dark mode, I even automated switching between light and dark on my phone to deal with different lighting conditions.

Software that works with both is best

@naipotato I have astigmatism and dark themes feel more comfortable than the light ones, they are so bright that makes my eyes get tired, maybe I'm weird idk.

What I can say for sure is that dark themes that use straight up black for the background or pure white for the letters feel worse than light theme.

I try to use dark themes for coding and light themes for web browsing to read blogs.