Dave RahardjaI am begging website owners to always provide a light mode. It’s an accessibility issue for me: my aging eyes are no longer able to view light-on-dark text for extended periods without severe ghosting/afterimages.
Vanu Arson@drahardja
Heya Dave, I design a lot of websites and apps for my work. We usually design them for dark mode first, which means we often have design oversights in the light versions.
Are there any things we should keep in mind to make sure that the light versions are accessible to people like you?
@VanuPhantom I’m sure light-on-dark design has been discussed extensively since the days of print. I’m not a usability expert, but I can tell you what affects me personally.
I’m most sensitive to anything that look like bars: repeating strips of high contrast light against dark, like prison cell bars in old cartoons; these patterns cause severe afterimages, often lasting minutes.
My pet theory is that *light areas* in general cause afterimages for me overall. However, in light mode, the entire window is light, so it makes less difference because I basically get a diffuse, white-rectangle afterimage which doesn’t really interfere with details that I’m trying to focus on (it may reduce contrast somewhat in my brain but it’s fine). But in dark mode, the only bright things that cause afterimages are the fine detail (text), so as I move around these afterimages interfere severely against the new details I’m trying to read. A similar thing happens with bars when I’m in light mode.
@VanuPhantom Body text fonts matter too. A font with tall counters and good variation between characters are easier to read for me. For serifs, I don’t like fonts that have very thin parts (e.g. Bodoni) for text because they tend to make the thicker parts look like bars. I prefer fonts like Schoolbook that have more modest thick/thin contrast, or Adelle that has basically uniform line widths.
cobalt@drahardja @VanuPhantom Former graphic artist who had to choose fonts produced by Selectric typewriters, or using photography or clip art here. Of course an Old. I really dislike dark backgrounds on websites. I have to stop reading after a few paragraphs. I’m grateful with an iPhone I can use the Reader option to get the site out of dark mode and choose the size on the text.
Also, I’m a long time fan of sans serif fonts. I used Comic Sans for years and even now I produce many documents in Arial Narrow. I never saw Schoolbook or Adele but see they are nice for serif font use.