Make dark mode accessible to all as an autism disability accommodation

Exercism Bugs & Feature Requests
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The high-contrast dark mode and the other options do not work for me. I need to use the standard dark mode. the high contrast is not suitable for autistic individuals with heightened sensitivity to contrast.

I request that this feature be made available to everyone. If it is a matter of raising funds for this I am happy to lead the charge if an amount can be named. I am willing to pay to support this otherwise excellent website, but I cannot support an organization holding disability aids hostage.

please can this request be taken seriously and some thought given to why this is so important to gatekeep? Do you really believe the majority of people would stop funding you if you let everyone use darkmode? dark mode is no longer an optional feature for most new apps, itā€™s considered a basic part of the user experience, like subtitles.

1 Like
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Hey. Thanks for moving the discussion here.

I think a significant proportion would, yes.

I think historic context is important. Before we added it as a Premium feature, there was no Dark Mode. We invested the money and time in creating it as a strategy to help keep us running. Since then, lots of people have joined Insiders for this reason. There are definitely others that just support us, and I donā€™t claim to know what the percentages are, but I do think itā€™s a feature that lots of people are willing to pay for.

As I said over email, the dark mode is not intended to be an accessibility mode. Because it coincidently works for your accessibility needs doesnā€™t mean that will always be the case, or that it will work for othersā€™ accessibility needs. We intend to have dedicated accessibility options available that cover the accessibility needs people have.

At the time, we discussed what the correct options were, and felt that dark mode was appropriate for people with light-sensitivity, and low-contrast as appropriate for people who are sensitive to contrast. This is the first time someone has told me that those donā€™t work for them, so the key thing Iā€™d like to understand is what are the accessibility needs that are not met by those two themes? We can then create a new accessibility theme for. Do you need a low-contrast dark-mode for example.

To reiterate, ā€œGive everyone dark modeā€ isnā€™t an accessibility solution IMO, as people have much more diverse needs than a highly-designed dark theme meet. Iā€™d much rather be proactive in creating good accessibility themes, and have the creative freedom to do whatever we want with the dark theme without risking introducing accessibility regressions.

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Hi, thanks for continuing the discussion.

So the dark mode of the forum for example works very well for me. Thatā€™s all Iā€™m looking for. Generally dark themes fit my needs very well, just not high contrast ones.

To give you an idea of how I use the internet, ALL websites either have dark theme applied or have a manual override to dark theme. Same with the applications I use. If they donā€™t have this, I donā€™t use them.

Now, normally that would be fine, thatā€™s the choice of the developer, the only reason Iā€™m making a fuss here is I otherwise LOVE your project and donā€™t think thereā€™s another like it, and you have a working solution that would massively benefit my life and other, and yet I canā€™t access it. Yes, I can pay for insiders, which I fully intend to do once this issue is resolved, but that wouldnā€™t help me in supporting other people who need dark mode and it smacks of the same issue as NHS vs Private healthcare.

I recognise I could manually theme the website and indeed I have done that, but it looks less good than the carefully tailored appearance you crafted and itā€™s also not going to be something everyone can do, either through lacking knowledge or technological restrictions placed on their PC by their school or employer, for example.

If you really donā€™t want to make it available for everyone, would you consider an honesty system where people could state they require it for accessibility reasons?

Any ā€˜accessibleā€™ theme version you make is liable to be less refined because, as you say, your dark mode theme took a lot of work. Itā€™s been made to be easier on the eyes, you even say that in your marketing blurb. Thatā€™s what I need.

So, I guess the question is, how do we work towards this?

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Hi, another person here to tell you the accessibility dark mode is not accessible for me. Bright magenta text on black is almost as painful as black text on white.

Are you familiar with the ā€œcurb-cut effectā€? Itā€™s when something designed as an accessibility tool or accommodation for people with disabilities turns out to be really useful for abled people too. So named because the little ramps for sidewalk access turned out to be great for strollers and carts as well as for wheelchairs. The keyboard you are most likely using is a direct descendant of the typewriter, which was, surprise, an accessibility tool for those with disabilities that made hand-writing very difficult.

Dark Mode is admittedly not a member of this category, you are correct, it was not originally intended as an accessibility tool. But technologies you use every day came about because of (and were often designed by) people with disabilities. The whole world benefits from accessibility tools that ā€œcoincidentallyā€ happen to make something easier for other people too. Some reciprocation would be nice.

If your product or service canā€™t fund itself except by charging users for accessibility features (when the product or service is not itself an accessibility tool), thatā€™s a pretty big sign that youā€™re doing something wrong. You could make custom themes in colors of the userā€™s choice a ā€œbonus featureā€, people like that. No matter how you frame it, you are gatekeeping an accessibility feature.

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What makes you think the Premium theme will work any better than the accessibility one? The Premium theme is distinctly NOT designed for accessibility. Itā€™s designed to look good to people WITHOUT accessibility issues.

Thatā€™s where there is a specific theme designed for people with accessibility issues. If there are problems with the accessibility theme that could be fixed, then please suggest tangible fixes.