Just an idea: Dark / Color Blindness mode

[Junsho]

Dear Technical team,
Please, could you consider implementing a dark mode and perhaps a colorblind mode for the forum? I don't know the details for sure, but adding new themes doesn't seem like a complicated task and would help make the forum more inclusive and accessible, don't you think?

Gassho and deep bows.
SatLah

[Roo]

I would love a dark mode on here.

I agree, too, for the color blind mode.

Gassho, A
Satlah

[Taiji]

This seems like it would be a very good idea. I use Dark Reader on Firefox to force the site into Dark Mode, which is a real help for me, but sometimes the integration is a little clunky, and a native Dark Mode would be nice to have. Color Blind mode won't affect me directly, but if it would benefit folks here, then I'm all for it.

Gassho,
Vic
Sat/LAH Today

[Kotei]

Dear Technical team,
Please, could you consider implementing a dark mode and perhaps a colorblind mode for the forum? I don't know the details for sure, but adding new themes doesn't seem like a complicated task and would help make the forum more inclusive and accessible, don't you think?

Hello,
unfortunately with vBulletin it is not just adding alternative colors schemes, but there is also functionality and access rights and such contained in the themes (and a non-intuitive backend to edit them doesn't help with it), so it requires some more time and testing to implement and complicates future changes.
But that is not a strong reason against adding a new theme, just a reply to "it doesn't seem like a complicated task".

I totally get the dark mode, but how do you picture the color blind mode?

I only have limited experience with it and think about the different possible measures like following:
Protanopia (Red-blind) = replace red or darken red elements
Deuteranopia (Green-blind) = improve red/green separation
Tritanopia (Blue-blind) = increase blue/yellow contrast
General = make sure there is a strong light/dark contrast

I can see that there may be general improvements thinkable for visually impaired, like larger fonts, consistent ALT tags and such.
Maybe a black instead of dark blue on light blue menu.
But I don't know how to improve regarding the color blindness... where to separate colors better. We only have black on white and a bit blue.
Do you know, or do we have color blind folks here, who can help me understand?

Gassho,
Kotei sat/lah today.

[Junsho]

Hi Kotei,
I'm not a specialist in color blindness myself. For me, dark mode is the most important, and that's why I started this thread. My eyes get irritated quickly when reading too much on light themes (I am probably sensitive to light). So, I thought it would be a great idea to request it not only for myself but also for people with color blindness. I believe offering additional themes for people to feel more comfortable reading the forum is a great idea.

Also, I am not a Vbulletin expert, and I never meant to imply that this is an easy feature to implement. It just doesn’t seem very complicated at first glance.

Gassho and deep bows.
SatLah

[Kotei]

Hi Kotei,
I'm not a specialist in color blindness myself. For me, dark mode is the most important, and that's why I started this thread. My eyes get irritated quickly when reading too much on light themes (I am probably sensitive to light). So, I thought it would be a great idea to request it not only for myself but also for people with color blindness. I believe offering additional themes for people to feel more comfortable reading the forum is a great idea.

Oh yes, I get the general idea, but from the perspective of one of the folks, who might end up actually doing it, I need to know what I am supposed to do.
I can see that the benefit of having a dark theme outweighs the work and future work (updating etc.).
But I cannot see how a "color blindness" theme would differ from what we already have.
Gassho,
Kotei sat/lah today.

[Roo]

This seems like it would be a very good idea. I use Dark Reader on Firefox to force the site into Dark Mode, which is a real help for me, but sometimes the integration is a little clunky, and a native Dark Mode would be nice to have. Color Blind mode won't affect me directly, but if it would benefit folks here, then I'm all for it.

Gassho,
Vic
Sat/LAH Today

Just added this extension to mine. Thank you

Gassho

[Shinshi]

Hi Folks,

There are a number of ways to test for accessibility for color blindness. The simplest one is to use the dev tools in the Edge browser. It will simulate 4 types of color vision issues so you can see what the website looks like. The default style is perfectly readable under those 4 simulations. I also ran it through an online tester and it reported no color blind issues. So a quick look suggests no major issues.

Gassho,

Shinshi

[Chikyou]

This is a great idea!

In the meantime: if you’re on iOS, the Noir extension in Safari is really good. It’s not free (it costs a couple of dollars, not expensive and totally worth it) but it allows you to tweak the settings for every site and for each site individually. My Treeleaf settings are a nice grey.

I also have a dark mode extension in my Edge browser on my PC. It might be called “dark reader” (I honestly don’t recall the name of it because I’m on my iPad right now) which allows customization for each site as well.

(And yes, both of these extensions “remember” my settings so I don’t have to mess with them each time I visit a site).

While I think that having the forum be accessible by default is a great thing, I’m not sure if these types of accommodations might be better handled on the user end where they can be customized and tweaked to everyone’s own particular needs, which is something that really can’t be done with forum themes.

So maybe we have a “reduced eye strain” theme (whatever that looks like) but we could also compile a list of resources for people to download/tweak their own settings? This would help across multiple sites as well, not just TreeLeaf - someone could find out about something here that would be useful across the board.

Gassho,
SatLah,
Chikyō

[Kotei]

Hello everyone,
I am not yet happy with what you can select from the bottom of each page as "Dark" style now.
But I have already spent more time than I wanted in the unclear mess of configuration variables and templates of vbulletin.
I need to move on to doing something more pressing, but will come back to this soon.
For now, I have enabled my "state of the affairs" - "work in progress" Dark style, so you can see where I stand.
Gassho,
Kotei sat/lah today.

[Ryumon]

I can't read sites in dark mode, and find it annoying when they force that on people, often on gaming websites. However, I understand that some people like it. As others suggested, it's probably best to use a browser extension, where you can configure the dark mode the way you like. For example, some people want the page background to be #000000 black, others a dark grey, and you can set that with most extensions. Chikyou mentioned Noir for Safari, which I've tested, and which is very flexible, but I'm sure extensions for other browsers are as flexible.

Gassho,

Ryūmon (Kirk)

Sat Lah