💾 Archived View for gemi.dev › gemini-mailing-list › 000409.gmi captured on 2024-06-16 at 13:08:43. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2023-12-28)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
https://gemini.circumlunar.space/ Maybe it's due to my poor eyesite but 'dark text on a light olive background with red links.' Guys we can do better. Seriously. I get wanting to avoid 'white background with black text' but that site is visually offensive and actively makes my eyes hurt. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <https://lists.orbitalfox.eu/archives/gemini/attachments/20201019/1bd4 aaef/attachment.htm>
On 19-Oct-2020 22:33, Andrew Singleton wrote: > https://gemini.circumlunar.space/ > > Maybe it's due to my poor eyesite but 'dark text on a light olive > background with red links.' > > Guys we can do better. Seriously. I get wanting to avoid 'white > background with black text' but that site is visually offensive and > actively makes my eyes hurt. Hi Andrew Please accept my apologies in advance for this suggestion, but you could use this version, it can have whatever styling suits you best, if you go with a client that offers user controlled content styling :) gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space/ My understanding is that solderpunk keeps the website is purposefully rustic and light of content, to draw the curious into gemini space itself. As for the actual colour scheme - yes it is a bit arbitrary and probably is a turn off for anyone expecting gemini to be a graphic designer's playground. - Luke
On Mon, 19 Oct 2020, Luke Emmet wrote: > the actual colour scheme - yes it is a bit arbitrary and probably is a turn > off for anyone expecting gemini to be a graphic designer's playground. I wonder if that's partly intentional ;) Mk -- Martin Keegan, @mk270, https://mk.ucant.org/
There is a difference between 'may have turn off for people expecting grwphics' and making thigs activly difficult to read. Do not hide behind 'lol stop expecting graphics scrub' to have horrific coloration. On Mon, Oct 19, 2020, 7:14 PM Martin Keegan <martin at no.ucant.org> wrote: > On Mon, 19 Oct 2020, Luke Emmet wrote: > > > the actual colour scheme - yes it is a bit arbitrary and probably is a > turn > > off for anyone expecting gemini to be a graphic designer's playground. > > I wonder if that's partly intentional ;) > > Mk > > -- > Martin Keegan, @mk270, https://mk.ucant.org/ > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <https://lists.orbitalfox.eu/archives/gemini/attachments/20201019/d4d3 2c2e/attachment.htm>
On Mon, Oct 19, 2020 at 10:54 PM Andrew Singleton <singletona082 at gmail.com> wrote: There is a difference between 'may have turn off for people expecting > grwphics' and making thigs activly difficult to read. > I agree absolutely. Do not hide behind 'lol stop expecting graphics scrub' to have horrific > coloration > Fortunately there's Just Read <https://github.com/ZachSaucier/Just-Read>, which is a plugin for Firefox and Chrome that applies a sensible CSS to any web site you like: black print on white paper, as God and Gutenburg intended. John Cowan http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan cowan at ccil.org Work hard / play hard, cowan at ccil.org die young / rot quickly. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <https://lists.orbitalfox.eu/archives/gemini/attachments/20201019/9e02 37ff/attachment.htm>
Emphasizing that Gemini user agents can adjust the presentation to suit the user's preferences is entirely fine, but making accessibility choices which discriminates against users with visual impairments is a much less agreeable choice. The site should strive to be plain and readable. It's pretty accessible through my Gemini portal, if anyone needs it: https://portal.drewdevault.com/x/gemini.circumlunar.space/
On 10/20 08:28AM, Drew DeVault wrote: >Emphasizing that Gemini user agents can adjust the presentation to suit >the user's preferences is entirely fine, but making accessibility >choices which discriminates against users with visual impairments is a >much less agreeable choice. The site should strive to be plain and >readable. I agree with everyone's overall sentiment about accessibility and having a good default color scheme, etc., but am genuinely puzzled by the specific hate for gemini.circumlunar.space's look. Nobody would ever accuse me of having excellent vision, and I find it positively delightful? The light olive seems just muted enough to be a better contrast than glaring white. Maybe the red is a little too bold but it's mostly fine and used sparingly. I don't get the sense at *all* that solderpunk made it intentionally bad to emphasize client styling. It feels carefully and well chosen to me. What am I missing? -- Adrian
On Mon, 19 Oct 2020 16:33:40 -0500 Andrew Singleton <singletona082 at gmail.com> wrote: > Guys we can do better. Seriously. I get wanting to avoid 'white background > with black text' but that site is visually offensive and actively makes my > eyes hurt. I just want to make sure we're all on the same page; are we discussing aesthetics or accessibility (in terms of legibility I guess)? Both? Aesthetically I think it looks great. I took a look at it with a plugin that simulates different kinds of color vision impairments. With red- or green blindness the link text is quite hard to read. Maybe greater luminance contrast could be useful. It's hard to account for all kinds of impairment, but red-green blindness is common so orange-on-olive is perhaps not the best choice. For contrasts, there is apparently a "prefer-contrast" media query parameter which can be used by clients to signal their preference. -- Philip -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 488 bytes Desc: not available URL: <https://lists.orbitalfox.eu/archives/gemini/attachments/20201021/e603 14db/attachment.sig>
> making accessibility choices which discriminates against users with > visual impairments Can we not expect a user with visual impairments to already have their browser settings / extensions set up in a way to assist them? Surely if you can't read certain foreground and background combinations, you would be aware of Reader Mode at least.
On 10/21/20 12:03 PM, Leo wrote: >> making accessibility choices which discriminates against users with >> visual impairments > Can we not expect a user with visual impairments to already have their > browser settings / extensions set up in a way to assist them? Surely if > you can't read certain foreground and background combinations, you would > be aware of Reader Mode at least. My business these last few months has been redressing websites to comply with WCAG 2.1 AA standards as a result of lawsuits in the US filed under the ADA. Color contrast is only one small part of that, but let me assure you it is having very real financial impact on businesses right now. While a personal website may not be a target for litigation, following these standards is something we should all strive for if it is within our means. With regard to color schemes, if you are not yourself very good at design it may be helpful to know you can find and generate color palettes using Adobe's Color website, which will also give guidance on accessibility. https://color.adobe.com/create/color-accessibility Furthermore, both Chrome and Firefox have means of seeing the WCAG color contrast ratios using their respective inspectors. AAA is great, but shoot for AA at least. And finally, let me say that since this is about the Gemini website on circumlunar in particular, Solderpunk, if you find this stuff difficult or tedious or otherwise don't have time for it gimme a holler and I'll see what I can do to help.
Andrew Singleton <singletona082 at gmail.com> writes: > There is a difference between 'may have turn off for people expecting > grwphics' and making thigs activly difficult to read. Do not hide > behind 'lol stop expecting graphics scrub' to have horrific > coloration. Agreed ? it should have a color scheme that at least has accessible contrast. IMO, browser default with a light CSS typography reset would be fine. But beyond fixing the accessibility issue, this would be bikeshedding. -- +-----------------------------------------------------------+ | Jason F. McBrayer jmcbray at carcosa.net | | A flower falls, even though we love it; and a weed grows, | | even though we do not love it. -- Dogen |
Adrian Petrescu <adrian at apetre.sc> writes: > On 10/20 08:28AM, Drew DeVault wrote: >>Emphasizing that Gemini user agents can adjust the presentation to suit >>the user's preferences is entirely fine, but making accessibility >>choices which discriminates against users with visual impairments is a >>much less agreeable choice. The site should strive to be plain and >>readable. > > I agree with everyone's overall sentiment about accessibility and having > a good default color scheme, etc., but am genuinely puzzled by the > specific hate for gemini.circumlunar.space's look. Nobody would ever > accuse me of having excellent vision, and I find it positively > delightful? The background and text are fine, actually. The red links on the light olive background do not meet WCAG standards for accessible text, according to the checker I ran. -- +-----------------------------------------------------------+ | Jason F. McBrayer jmcbray at carcosa.net | | A flower falls, even though we love it; and a weed grows, | | even though we do not love it. -- Dogen |
> following these standards is something we should all strive for Instead of trying to fix millions of web pages and putting the burden on all the content producers, wouldn't it be easier to fix browsers to automatically assign suitable colours when the contrast is too low? After all, a user agent has no obligation to use the colours recommended by the website and it's stylesheets. > both Chrome and Firefox have means of seeing the WCAG color contrast > ratios. And since Chrome and Firefox both have code for calculating colour contrast ratios, a lot of the work is already done. If we are disregarding user agents being able to pick colours as a valid thing to do, should we also add styling to the Gemini document format so content producers can make sure their text is displayed correctly and is accessible?
Lighten the olive a touch and it should be better. Agree it's better than glaring white but touching it up a couple clicks could fix it. > The background and text are fine, actually. The red links on the light olive background do not meet WCAG standards for accessible text, according to the checker I ran.
On 10/21/20 2:16 PM, Leo wrote: > If we are disregarding user agents being able to pick colours as a valid > thing to do, should we also add styling to the Gemini document format so > content producers can make sure their text is displayed correctly and is > accessible? It's the lack of styling in the gemini document format working in our favor. On http browsers pass the buck for styling saying it's the content author's responsibility. In gemini we can do away with that nonsense and build clients better. Accessible clients are first-class citizens.
Oooooooh. Look guys, I'm sorry for not keeping up with the discussions. However the technical side, in spite of best efforts, kinda flies over my head. So the fact gemini clients have user-definable EVERYTHING is honestly a huge win in my book. I prefer dark background/light text. Other people with low vision like blue background with white text (personally I don't get it, but eh.) Others like a beige/cream background with dark text. The 'let the end user define what page elements present as' is honestly a step forward, especially with the idea of gemini being a middlepoint between gopher and full blown html. However I was viewing through a traditional browser, so I'm unsure how to square that problem. On 10/21/20, James Tomasino <tomasino at lavabit.com> wrote: > On 10/21/20 2:16 PM, Leo wrote: >> If we are disregarding user agents being able to pick colours as a valid >> thing to do, should we also add styling to the Gemini document format so >> content producers can make sure their text is displayed correctly and is >> accessible? > > It's the lack of styling in the gemini document format working in our favor. > On http browsers pass the buck for styling saying it's the content author's > responsibility. In gemini we can do away with that nonsense and build > clients better. Accessible clients are first-class citizens. > >
> For contrasts, there is apparently a "prefer-contrast" media query > parameter which can be used by clients to signal their preference. I think that using what you mentioned (prefers-contrast) along with prefers-color-scheme should definitely be considered! The former is still pretty experimental, but both could help web clients have a bit of choice without having any scripting involved. ~zeph
> > On 10/20 08:28AM, Drew DeVault wrote: > >>Emphasizing that Gemini user agents can adjust the presentation to suit > >>the user's preferences is entirely fine, but making accessibility > >>choices which discriminates against users with visual impairments is a > >>much less agreeable choice. The site should strive to be plain and > >>readable. I completely agree, the site should be readily accessible to visitors with visual impairments, and I'm suitably embarrassed that I didn't consider this. The current design was certainly *not* deliberately chosen to emphasise the fact (although naturally I think it's a great fact to emphasise) that Gemini's lack of author-controlled styling for content makes this kind of problem impossible. I just chose some colours, probably fairly quickly, which looked nice enough according to my own personal tastes... > > I agree with everyone's overall sentiment about accessibility and having > > a good default color scheme, etc., but am genuinely puzzled by the > > specific hate for gemini.circumlunar.space's look. Nobody would ever > > accuse me of having excellent vision, and I find it positively > > delightful? ...which I'm glad some other people share! On Wed Oct 21, 2020 at 2:51 PM CEST, Jason McBrayer wrote: > The background and text are fine, actually. The red links on the light > olive background do not meet WCAG standards for accessible text, > according to the checker I ran. Would that be https://contrastchecker.com/? Thanks for making me aware that suck checkers exist, I didn't realise there were tools like that out there for handling this. I will change the colours this weekend to a scheme which meets accessibility standards. Cheers, Solderpunk
"Solderpunk" <solderpunk at posteo.net> writes:
> On Wed Oct 21, 2020 at 2:51 PM CEST, Jason McBrayer wrote:
>> The background and text are fine, actually. The red links on the
>> light olive background do not meet WCAG standards for accessible
>> text, according to the checker I ran.
> Would that be https://contrastchecker.com/? Thanks for making me aware
> that suck checkers exist, I didn't realise there were tools like that
> out there for handling this. I will change the colours this weekend to
> a scheme which meets accessibility standards.
Firefox actually has a built-in checker in the developer tools, and I
used that. It checks for some other accessibility issues, too, but that
was the only one that it found.
--
Jason McBrayer | ?Strange is the night where black stars rise,
jmcbray at carcosa.net | and strange moons circle through the skies,
| but stranger still is lost Carcosa.?
| ? Robert W. Chambers,The King in Yellow
---