Slashdot Mirror
Internet is Becoming Unreadable Because of a Trend Towards Lighter, Thinner Fonts (telegraph.co.uk)
An anonymous reader writes: The internet is becoming unreadable because of a trend towards lighter and thinner fonts, making it difficult for the elderly or visually-impaired to see words clearly, a web expert has found. Where text used to be bold and dark, which contrasted well with predominantly white backgrounds, now many websites are switching to light greys or blues for their type. Award winning blogger Kevin Marks, founder of Microformats and former vice president of web services at BT, decided to look into the trend after becoming concerned that his eyesight was failing because he was increasingly struggling to read on screen text. He found a 'widespread movement' to reduce the contrast between the words and the background, with tech giants Apple, Google and Twitter all altering their typography. True black on white text has a contrast ratio of 21:1 -- the maximum which can be achieved. Most technology companies agree that it is good practice for type to be a minimum of 7:1 so that the visually-impaired can still see text. But Mr Marks, found that even Apple's own typography guidelines, which recommended 7:1 are written in a contrast ratio of 5.5:1.
UHD doesn't require you to fit more on your screen. You can also keep everything the same size at a much higher DPI, for better sharpness and clarity (edge contrast is contrast too). Or find somewhere nice in the middle. For those with high visual acuity, it's nice not having blurry edges.
Remember those crazy, utopian, idealists who tried to design web standards so that content and presentation could be, and would be, cleanly separated; and thus easily adapted to the requirements of just about any user agent out there?
That dream isn't completely dead; but it sure doesn't get much respect from the cool kids(which can make the 'just impose your own CSS' trick pretty hairy on some of the touchier sites out there).
At age 64, this article is timely for me. There are sites I would really like to read (example theintercept.com) but can not because they have fallen into the thrall of toney grey fonts as have so many others. In my example, I hardly think the people are bad people, but aren't they interested in getting their message out?
So I looked around on that site for a link like "Feedback" or "Contact Us", but without any luck. Perhaps it was in the same grey font.
Anyhow, I did find a "Jobs" link so I applied for a position of my own invention called "Web Usability Analyst, Part Time" and I explained my great interest in the position.
Haven't heard back.
The linked article itself is not even using black fonts.
They are using #333333 which is a dark grey.