Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Totally agree. And a non-human issue with your example:

We had #EEF as a subtle light-blue 5px resizer handle on a #FFF background. However the resizer handle was invisible on a newly unboxed monitor the other day (benq 32 inch 4k monitor) - because it was showing up as white on white.

It was fixed by replacing the HDMI cable.

I think the HDMI connection was dropping back to a lower bitrate. Screenshot, and displaying the screenshot on another monitor, showed that the blue resizer line was there but it was not being displayed correctly.



It was fixed by replacing the HDMI cable.

Unfortunately that only fixed it on that single computer. The correct fix would have been to use a different color.


I agree.

I admit I am still unsure how to decide what is an acceptable colour difference in the face of both human issues and technological complications.


There are tools out there - https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/

Google actually added a new 'AAA' contrast checker to Chrome 73 in the devtools ('AA' was already there). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uddZX9ZK6wY


I just tested that on pure red, and iOS button blue, on a white background. They both fail the AAA contrast test (on WebAIM and Google devtools).

The majority of apps and websites would fail the AAA test in heaps of places (unless they have a "high-contrast mode").

#F00 on #FFF: fail on AAA (pure red on white: contrast 4).

#07F on #FFF: fail on AAA ("iOS" button blue on white: contrast 4.13).


Yes. 'Pure' colors tend to be bright, so white text doesn't contrast well enough. As a rule, designers don't use the pure color. I suspect lots of sites get accessibility wrong because developers prioritize using nice round numbers (eg F00 rather than D00) instead of accessible colors.


Bitrate shouldn't do that, but maybe there was a miscommunication about whether to use 0-255 or 16-235 for brightness values.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: