
I have pretty awful eyesight; I need glasses to function!
Not only this, but I also have astigmatism, so much so that I needed surgery on my eyes to address this.
While this procedure helped some major problems, I still find certain visual elements difficult to look at.
What is astigmatism?
Described as ‘A defect in the eye… [which] results in distorted images’, it affects 1/3 of people.
If you have experienced driving at night and seeing the car lights expand almost like a firework, you most likely have astigmatism.
Astigmatism example | infocusoptical
While this defect and the various symptoms that come with it affect my day-to-day in the physical world, I find most frustration when behind a screen.
Often I run into digital products or services that are inaccessible to me.
Colour contrast
Think of the most accessible colour contrast… if you said black and white, you would technically not be wrong.
In fact, on any colour contrast checker, it passes with flying colours (excuse the pun).
#000000 and #ffffff | colourcontrast.cc
Well. I disagree.
While you see bold and clarity. I see haze and obscurity. If I look too long my eyes get strained and I have to rest them. This is known as the Halation effect.
This is particularly present in dark mode.
When my favourite sites started offering dark modes, I got very excited. But soon, I realised that this new feature advertised as ‘accessible’, was inaccessible to me.
Being presented with bold colours or black backgrounds, I found myself quickly switching back to light mode.
Imitation of Halation effect | Reddit
If you are designing dark mode for one of your digital products, running your styles through a colour contrast checker is not enough!
I advise using muted or desaturated shades of your brand colours.
Desaturated colours | atmos.style
In conclusion…
It’s tempting and easy to create infallible rules and guidelines; they provide confidence and proof that the design decisions we make are accessible to our users.
But, I don’t believe we are there yet. Not quite.
We are still working it out and that’s ok!
It feels good to still be here, it tells me that we are continuing to comprehend all of our users and provide the very best solutions for them.
So, this brings me back to the title of this post: ‘Accessibility is not always black and white’
… it’s more of a dark grey and white. 😉
Snowy stairs
As a treat for reading to the end, here is a short story about accessibility I wrote, inspired by a cartoon from Kevin Ruelle:
A crowd of people are waiting outside a bakery. It’s cold out and had been snowing the night before. Everyone waits anxiously to get into the warmth as soon as the doors open.
While the road behind them had been cleared earlier, the entrance to the bakery is still filled with snow and needs shovelling.
Ramp and stairs covered in snow | dreamstime.com
The baker starts to shovel the stairs when a man in a wheelchair asks ‘Could you clear the ramp first?’.
The baker replies ‘I am sorry, but don’t you see all these customers waiting, I will get to you after’.
‘Yes, I see’, said the man in the wheelchair, ‘but if you shovel the ramp first, we can all get in’.
When we consider users with disabilities, learning differences or differing skill levels in our design decisions, our products will only ever get better, not just for those specific users, but for everyone!
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