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Use an off-black background for dark mode and off-white for light mode #647

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@hs4man21

Description

Describe the bug
The current background colors on the web app are harsh, and this is actually an accessibility issue, as pure black on white text is known to cause eye strain whereas white on black can appear blurred (this is called halation) especially to users with astigmatism.

GitHub's color scheme might be a good model for how off-black and off-white backgrounds can be used for increased accessibility and general user comfort. Slack provides another example and is even more on the gray side of things than GitHub.

To Reproduce

Expected behavior

Pure black and white backgrounds should be avoided across the board. Slack, GitHub, Discord, VS Code and other apps use alternative colors for backgrounds to improve user experience.

If keeping pure black and white backgrounds is preferred, then another option is graying the text a bit to reduce the harshness.

Screenshots

Bluesky dark mode

Screenshot 2023-05-16 at 12 30 25 AM

GitHub dark mode (off-black)

Screenshot 2023-05-16 at 12 31 13 AM

Slack dark mode (further off-black/gray)

Screenshot 2023-05-16 at 12 35 47 AM

Details

  • Platform: Desktop Chrome MacOS
  • Platform version: MacOS: Ventura 13.1, Chrome: 112.0.5615.137
  • App version: 1.28(?), not sure where to find web app version number

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