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Webdesigners: please make text readable

contrastrebellion.com Essays & writing Essays & articles Design & creativity Class of 2017-06 Hall of Fame
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Submission timeline

2007–2026

One slot for every year since HN launched. Height is that year's peak points; orange marks a 100+ point or 50+ comment breakout. Select a bar to open its strongest thread.

Top comments

Even worse (or probably related) than the general contrast problem is the absolutely crazy suggestion to use -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; in your CSS (http://maxvoltar.com/archive/-webkit-font-smoothing) I've yet to come across an instance where antialiased is better than using subpixel hinting. In addition, I think it's crazy that the browser would allow a site designer to alter such a highly OS- or even machine-specific setting. Heck - there's even special tuning wizards in most OSes to configure the…

pilif·467-point thread·

It would be nice since they are advocating for readable text if the font sizes were appropriate on mobile. Even funnier is that lighthouse shows a multitude of accessibility problems in the page including.... low contrast. https://pagespeed.web.dev/analysis/https-contrastrebellion-c... Apparently the reason for the awful sizing on mobile is missing the responsive viewport meta tag... IDK, I agree with the content of the website but it's just mind-numbing that it has these issues.

Yeah, and this website does grotty hacks to figure out my browser tab size and scale--which makes me scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll on a 4K monitor. He's an brilliant idea: quit trying to turn the web from scrolling text into a damn slideshow. Thanks.

bsder·99-point thread·

> When making the contrast of the text lower and lower... designers need to think of > elderly users with bad vision > low quality monitors > bad lighting and glare > reading on tiny screens And easily pissed off curmudgeons like myself. I immediately hit "No Styles" at the slightest visual irritation; low contrast is the most common. I'll do this many times in a day, with a satisfied, grumbled "harumph." I suppose that I, a mere reader/user, am…

a3n·86-point thread·

The first top-level comment from each of the four biggest threads, in HN’s own order. Excerpts are shortened; open a comment for full context.

HN stats

Breakout years
3

100+ points or 50+ comments

Total points
1008

reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking

Total comments
411

reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking

Every submission

DateTitle as submittedByPointsComments
2011-07-26Webdesigners: please make text readableFirst breakout · Best threadbmaeser467106
2015-04-26Contrast Rebellionkartikkumar9970
2015-07-21Contrast Rebellionavodonosov21
2017-01-26Contrast Rebellion – to hell with unreadable, low-contrast textsapo10
2017-06-17The Contrast RebellionHall inductionjansho8646
2021-02-06The Contrast Rebellionsmoyer35
2021-04-08Contrast Rebellion – to hell with unreadable, low-contrast textsTomte7039
2023-05-07Low-contrast font color and unreadable texts? To hell with them!Latest 20+ point returngjvc280144