Gray Text instead of Black AND Captcha Text

[beachlady]

I just read a discussion about why these days web designers so often use a gray font rather than black. A lot of comments about black against white being too much contrast.

Well, here’s another viewpoint…I have severe eyesight problems and some sites are virtually impossible for me to read. I have never thought black against white was harsh.

Additionally, on another subject…why do those frustrating Captcha codes have to be absolutely non-readable in many instances?

[TechnoBear]

@beachlady

A lot of comments about black against white being too much contrast.

I think the problem is that a lot of designers go to the opposite extreme and use a very light grey which, as you say, is useless for those with poor vision. It can be a struggle for anyone when they’re tired, poor vision or no. Dark grey is maybe less tiring to read on a white background than black, because the contrast is less stark, but thre are tools available to check that there is sufficient contrast, so there’s no excuse for these barely-legible sites, IMHO.

I use this colour contrast analyser (which also runs on Linux under Wine), and there is a similar on-line tool here: http://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/

[beachlady]

Thank you for responding to my post and for your comments.

[Erik_J]

As a user I share your view regarding colors and background for body text. The contrast is also affected by the font size, and visual designers often use large font sizes. A smaller size, like 12px that I usually prefer, needs more contrast if you want to browse through or read fast.

A solution could be to set your own rules in userContent.css (e.g. find the file in the user directory: mozilla/firefox/xxxxxxx.default/chrome/) to fix the text colors. Downside is that it affects all sites and you have to restart the browser to let changes take effect.

My solution is to use an extension that allows me to make changes on the fly and turn it on or off when I want, and set my own rules for any specific site I want.
The extension/addon I prefer for the moment is: https://userstyles.org/
A global setting you can try for start and then edit and specify for only the hard to read sites:

/*** general readability ***/
p,
p *,
code,
pre {
    background: white;
    color: black;
}

Hope it can be of any help.