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by greggturkington 1731 days ago
There's "bad design" (subjective) then there's "fails to meet accessibility standards" (objective). HN would not pass WCAG 2.0 AA for a large number of reasons. Tap targets and illegible text being big ones.

It doesn't matter if you can zoom into text when downvoted comments have so little contrast with the background (#ddd over #f6f6ef). The "X minutes ago", "hide", "edit" comment header links even fail without zooming.
1 comments
Zababa 1731 days ago
> Tap targets and illegible text being big ones.

You can zoom, and the website reacts very well to zooming.

> It doesn't matter if you can zoom into text when downvoted comments have so little contrast with the background (#ddd over #f6f6ef).

That's on purpose. If you don't agree with it it's trivial to overload it with custom CSS.

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greggturkington 1731 days ago
Agreed, it's not accessible; if you write your own accessible theme, it will have an accessible theme.

Your apartment building doesn't have a wheelchair ramp? That's on purpose. If you don't agree with it it's trivial to buy a bag of concrete and build one.

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Zababa 1731 days ago
> Your apartment building doesn't have a wheelchair ramp? That's on purpose. If you don't agree with it it's trivial to buy a bag of concrete and build one.

That's a bad metaphor. First it's not possible to build a wheelchair ramp in your apartment building without affecting everyone else. Second, a custom CSS is very easy to make compared to a wheelchair ramp. Third, the comments being hard to read is, again, on purpose. I don't know the precise reason behind it, from what I understand it's part of the numerous tools that HN has to try to be a better place for discussion online than the rest. Some other tools seems to be: dead comments not being visible by default, new accounts having their names highlighted, the "reply" button not being here on "deep" threads in the "regular tree view".

If you don't agree with this decision, that's fine but that doesn't mean everyone is aligned with you.

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greggturkington 1731 days ago
Yes, a custom CSS theme is easy to make, for web developers. https://pastebin.com/aMYiGr05

It's not for my friend, who's a contractor. He finds working with concrete to be easy though. I don't.

Being inaccessible on purpose doesn't change the fact that it's inaccessible.

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Zababa 1731 days ago
I don't think it's that hard for non web developers. The rule is commtext { color: black; }. I think that adding an option (like showdead) would be better, as it doesn't require people to take the time to find out by themselves. Again, your comparaison doesn't really hold.

> Being inaccessible on purpose doesn't change the fact that it's inaccessible.

It explains why it still is though.

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greggturkington 1731 days ago
> The rule is commtext { color: black; }

No it's not, it's more complicated: https://pastebin.com/aMYiGr05 (and there's no "commtext" class). So it's literally harder than you think, and you're presumably a developer. So how about the average user?

> It explains why it still is though.

Um, ok? And the building only has stairs because the architect didn't consider the needs of people that use assistive devices like wheelchairs. What's your point? "Why?" was not in question.

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