Ask HN: How did low contrast text become so pervasive?
10 mr-pink 13 6/30/2025, 3:38:35 AM
It seems like black on white text is now truly verboten for whatever reason on at least 70-80% of websites.
can anyone explain the benefits? to me, everything looks faded out, and rather than my eyes being able to pick up the letterforms I just perceive a field of gray and have to rely on plug-ins to get easily discernible text back.
From my experience working with designers, many have minimal understanding of WCAG and will only adjust the contrast near the end of the design phase to get it within passing limits if it's easy to do without spoiling their design.
The rules for body text are pretty simple and I'm not excusing it, but WCAG can be intimidating and confusing (ask people why they don't follow it or understand it). There's loads of rules, the documentation is verbose, and it tells you what needs to pass, but lacks guidelines on how to do this with branded designs.
I've been in this situation as a developer a few times where I'll tell the designer what the WCAG rules are, and they'll not change anything because they don't know what to do without spoiling their design. E.g. I'll mention "your main brand color can be used for large heading text, but it doesn't contrast enough for buttons", where the options might include picking a darker brand color (a big ask), a darker color just for buttons or maybe black for buttons.
To help with the above, I started working on a tool to create branded color palettes, with the idea that you pick the colors for your headings, buttons, body text etc. with accessible contrast upfront, rather than tweaking the contrast of these as an afterthought later:
https://www.inclusivecolors.com/
It is not necessarily relevant if you only work with private individuals and entities.
But it also isn't that much of a burden. So my take on it is just do it and then it never is a problem.
If they ask for something outside WCAG, I say no, that doesn't meet the standards required and do not ask if they want to respect the standard.
I learned to stop asking permission to use my professional judgement when I went to a boss with an active password/login leak that was risking an important dataset and his response was "if it hasn't leaked, let's just not worry about it and leave it"
What do you know, the next morning he was informed of a leak and I was approved to fix the issue. The leak was not real, of course.
On the other, there are lots of articles explaining that black on white will cause readers discomfort so recommend camouflaged light grey on dark grey, or vice versa, as better.
Some say that black on white is harsh on the eyes, but something like 10:1 should be fine.