[sherry-sherry]

No.

There's pretty much nothing in the natural world that has the contrast ratio a modern screen can produce. It is easier on the eyes to not have blindingly high contrast.

No printed page in any book or magazine you've seen has ever had contrast ratio a screen can show. It's just not possible to do.

Legibility can be an issue, and is good to discuss. I agree that when something like "@media (prefers-contrast: more)" is set, text should be at a higher contrast level for those with lower vision. But don't blind everyone else in the process.

>... the amount of times per day I ask myself if I’m literally going blind, only to find out the “designer” decided for me how I should best read their website.

Yes? That's what the designers of literally everything do, decide how it will be presented to you. The magic part of HTML/CSS is you can change that to suit your needs.

[hulitu]

> There's pretty much nothing in the natural world that has the contrast ratio a modern screen can produce.

The natural world has much better contrast than the majority of screens. Not everyone has or affords a Mac Retina display. The main issue is, that, since some 10 years, UX experts appeared who pushed away configurability in favor of gray on gray ( remember when you were able to select the background and foreground color ?). The majority of screens have crappy contrasts (100:1).

[sherry-sherry]

Paper and ink have at best, a ~15:1 contrast ratio (bleached white paper and black ink).

> The majority of screens have crappy contrasts (100:1).

No idea where you're pulling this from. A MacBook Air display from 2010, a very average non-retina screen, has about 300:1. A modern MBA is over 1000:1 real-world contrast performance. A very average quality budget TN display from 2010s is 500:1.

I could not find a phone or desktop display at my local retailer with stated a contrast ratio lower than 1200:1 (stated vs real world will of course be different, but not hugely).

I agree apps/websites should take into account user preferences (with things like 'prefers-contrast' in CSS). I saw a great example recently where a website had a light/dark/hi-contrast toggle... but on first visit it defaulted to the one based on current system light/dark mode and 'prefers-contrast' indicators.

We can have both text that's easier for most people eyes and higher contrast and/or larger text for those who need it.

[mikae1]

The idea that "nothing in the natural world has the contrast of a modern display" is backwards and keeps being repeated. The real world has far more contrast than any screen that can be manufactured.

Think about standing outside on a sunny day. The sunlit pavement might be tens of thousands of times brighter than the shadow under a tree. Look up at a bright cloud and then glance into a shaded doorway. Your eyes can still make out detail in both. The dynamic range of the real world the ratio between the darkest and brightest things present at the same time is enormous.

Cameras struggle with this. When you take a photo, the camera can't always capture both the bright sky and the dark ground correctly at the same time. Either the sky blows out to white or the shadows become black. That limitation is why HDR photography and exposure bracketing exists.

Even modern digital cameras still capture a far wider range of brightness than most displays can show. That's why we use tone mappers in photography and video. Tone mapping compresses the huge brightness range captured by the camera so it can fit onto a display that only has a tiny slice of that range.

So screens are not "more contrasty" than reality. They're the opposite. Displays are a bottleneck that force a very wide real world brightness range into something much smaller.

Your eyes are also incredibly good at adapting. If you look at a white page of paper in sunlight and then look at black ink on it, the contrast between the two is extremely strong. Snow in sunlight next to a dark rock is another example. Nature is full of intense light and dark differences.

When web developers avoid strong contrast because it feels "unnatural", they're misunderstanding the physics and the biology. High contrast between text and background isn't artificial at all. It's actually closer to how humans evolved to see clearly: dark shapes against bright surfaces or bright shapes against dark ones.

The real ergonomic problem with screens usually isn't contrast between text and background. It's screen brightness relative to the environment. Many people run their monitors far brighter than the room around them. If a screen is glowing like a light source in a dim room, the whole display becomes visually harsh and fatiguing. In ergonomics, the usual advice is to match the screen's brightness to the surrounding lighting so the display feels like part of the environment rather than a flashlight in your face.

When display brightness is set appropriately, strong text contrast simply improves legibility. The discomfort people blame on "too much contrast" is often just a monitor that's set far brighter than it should be. Reality itself contains vastly wider brightness differences than any display, so high contrast text isn't unnatural at all. It's a practical way to make information clear within the limited dynamic range that screens can actually show.

[sherry-sherry]

Sorry. I really meant that there's nothing people are reading or viewing that has higher contrast in the natural world. I should've been clearer (and less forthright).

Your points about day/shade contrast and eyes adjusting are correct, as are screen brightness levels people use.

> Look up at a bright cloud and then glance into a shaded doorway.

Yes, and that causes strain on the eyes. Our eyes very are good at adapting (as you said), but it is not pleasant to do rapidly or while trying to concentrate and interpret text.

Bleached white paper and black ink is (pretty generously) ~15:1 contrast ratio in a well lit room, which any half decent screen in the past 20 years surpass.

Pure black/white text is harder to read on screens since they are producing and pushing light at you (as opposed bouncing back ambient light like on paper). We have never seen text printed on paper at the contrast ratios a modern screen can produce, since there is no paper white enough or ink dark enough.

There are many things with typography that are finicky and sometimes counter-intuitive. Making text bigger and all-caps won't always make something more readable (see here: https://www.mentalfloss.com/transportation/roads/why-road-si...), likewise more contrast doesn't always make it more readable for everyone.

Of course there are people who require more contrast and larger type sizes and the great part about reading stuff on screens is we can often accommodate that better. Some websites/apps/etc handle accessibility options well and some really don't.

So I kind of went on a much longer thing than I wanted to... oh well. Sorry if I was too forthright in my initial comment, I guess clarity in intent/meaning can be just as important as readability.