New color causes eyestrain, new font unnecessary, doesn't pass WCAG test.

Cat Dance Fever

• 16 mei 2021 05:30
• Bewerkt

The new color theme and mentions color are too contrasting with the dark mode tones in Discord. The moment I see the new color my eyes begin to hurt, and mentions being pure white is like a flashlight in a darkroom on my eyes.
The new font is inconsistent, and frankly isn't needed, and just makes things more confusing to process for a lot of people, myself included to a degree.
In Light Mode the same problems come from the new color, and a lot of other features are hard to separate from the white background. (Like the server list, code block messages etc), and the mentions being the old color just merges with the white, making it hard to see.
I did some research (https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/) and found the new color doesn't pass WCAG tests when put against the dark mode colors, the worst being the message area color as seen in this screenshot.
When I changed the same new color to a lighter, more saturated tone (much like the old color really), there were much better results and it was easier on my eyes, and I believe it should be considered for use/reuse.

Discord has gotten a bit disorienting for both me and many others since this update, and while I understand businesses need to change and keep appealing to new people, this update has had the opposite effect on long time users, and no doubt will push potential new users away from the platform that may have disabilities.
I hope that the legit complaints from both me and others will be considered and a new change to fix this will come soon.

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  Blue at Heart

  • 16 mei 2021 06:44

  I really wonder what kind of monitors they were using when they decided on the purple, I can only conclude they had a terribly outdated machine with their brightness set to minimum, and never bothered with checking it on other screens, or doing important tests like WCAG. Thanks for showing it officially fails in standard testing.

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  blazerules

  • 16 mei 2021 11:22

  Thank you! I was wondering exactly why the new theming caused my eyes to strain and this explains it all quite well.

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  ElectroMan

  • 16 mei 2021 21:08

  It's amazing how in 10 years we're slowly forgetting all the principles of UI design that've been developed since the inception of computing.

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  beckzorz

  • 16 mei 2021 15:21

  Thank you for going into such detail and providing solutions! Heartily agree.

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  ad-astra

  • 17 mei 2021 14:38

  This summed up how bad the update is really well.
  I noticed that Discord replied to someone’s concerns about accessibility with a feedback form. I filled it out already, so I hope others in do and share it with friends as well to let them know how inaccessible and garish the new colors, font, etc. are for users.

  Link to their tweet about it: https://twitter.com/discord/status/1392869194413355009
  Link to their Google form feedback itself: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdTzNbITTRx4BYWFlC3gi_lEi3D3rsa9VCBK_EphF5myDb7uw/viewform

  They claim accessibility is taken very seriously, so let’s be sure to inform them of how difficult these new changes are for people.

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  Wes34

  • 18 mei 2021 20:19

  Thanks for bringing the contrast issue up in such a numerical manner, didn't know there was a handy site for this.

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