[greggturkington]

> 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.

[Zababa]

There is a commtext class tough. Tested on Chrome and Firefox. I don't know what your linked pastebin does but if you just want all the comments to show up as black text, the rule commtext { color: black; } in the body is all you need. Please check that kind of information by yourself before assuming that I'm wrong.

> Um, ok? And the building only has stairs because the architect didn't consider the needs of people that use assistive devices like wheelchairs.

Using metaphors doesn't help, they don't hold. Unless you assume that there is some people that are considered undesirable and that are also being kept out by having only stairs? And that aren't correlated to people that use assistive devices like wheelchairs?

> What's your point? "Why?" was not in question.

Why is why not in question? HN breaks accessibility guidelines in an easily fixable ways for reasons that are related to the primary purpose of the website. I think at this point it's just a difference of values between us. You seem to think that accessibility guidelines should matter above everything, I think it's fine to break them when it's needed for the "purpose" of the website. One other example of that would be "old internet" website, with flashing text, non-legible text and everything. On these websites, not respecting the guidelines is fine for me.

[greggturkington]

Do you understand what a "class" is in HTML? Do you understand that the class "commtext" doesn't appear anywhere in the source code for HN? The comment colors are controlled by classes like "c00" etc. Chrome has a tool called "DevTools" you can use that will show you. Here's the CSS for this site: https://news.ycombinator.com/news.css

Again, you don't understand it, but want to tell everyone else how easy it is...

> not respecting the guidelines is fine for me

in contrast I think everyone should be able to use the web, that it should be accessible. This isn't important to you, but sometimes you have to think about other people with a limited set of abilities in a compassionate way. The GP mentions "bad design" and I mentioned an objective measure: text that can't be read by someone without writing code.

[Zababa]

> Do you understand what a "class" is in HTML?

Yes, I do.

> Do you understand that the class "commtext" doesn't appear anywhere in the source code for HN?

It actually does, try looking at the source code again.

> The comment colors are controlled by classes like "c00" etc.

Which is unrelated to the fact that you can use commtext to set their color.

> Chrome has a tool called "DevTools" you can use that will show you. Here's the CSS for this site: https://news.ycombinator.com/news.css

Why are you looking at the CSS and not at the HTML? Look at the HTML, and you'll see that every comment is inside an HTML element (usually a span) that has a commtext class.

> Again, you don't understand it, but want to tell everyone else how easy it is...

Again, you haven't checked and just assume you are right.

We can continue the conversation about values once you've learned how to use "show source" or the inspector.

Here's the link for the source of the page of the story: view-source:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28686126. Try looking up "commtext" (by using Ctrl + f).