1022557 - Devtools don't adapt at all for High Contrast mode

Status: NEW

(DevTools :: General, defect, P3)

Description

[Blair McBride [:Unfocused] (UNAVAILABLE)]

Devtools doesn't adapt at all when using High Contrast mode, making it unusable to anyone needing this. Perhaps it should use an adaption of the dark theme when using white-on-black High Contrast mode, and an adaption of the light theme when using black-on-white High Contrast mode.

Comment 1

[Mike Ratcliffe [:miker] [:mratcliffe] [:mikeratcliffe]]

To clarify, this is Windows High Contrast Mode and Blair is testing primarily on Windows 8.

Comment 2

[David Bolter [:davidb] (NeedInfo me for attention)]

Is the "p=13" a typo? (Glad you filed all these HCM bugs)

Comment 3

[Blair McBride [:Unfocused] (UNAVAILABLE)]

(In reply to David Bolter [:davidb] from comment #2)
> Is the "p=13" a typo?

p=X is the new point estimation system fx-team is using, to describe an estimated complexity/time cost to fix a bug, on a Fibonacci scale of 1-13. I figure to adapt the two devtools themes to work in HCM would be quite a bit of work, so I've assigned it the highest p value.

Comment 4

[Blair McBride [:Unfocused] (UNAVAILABLE)]

Oh look, a proper field.

Comment 5

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Realistically I'm not sure that we will do anything about this, since things aren't actually broken, they just don't provide the contrast users expect in high contrast mode. Ideally we should really fix this though, as we don't want to exclude users with poor eye sight from using devtools.

Addressing this /might/ be as easy as setting a bunch of colors (hopefully mostly CSS variables) in the devtools theme files specifically for high contrast mode, although that would require bug 425598. We could also tweak the colors to provide more contrast regardless of high contrast mode. http://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/ is a handy tool for checking if your colors provide sufficient contrast.

Can the devtools team please triage this?

Comment 6

[Joe Walker [:jwalker]]

TL;DR - I think Dão's marking this P3 is about right, but I'm willing to take guidance from anyone that knows more about how HCM is used in the real world.

We have ctrl/+ and ctrl/- so it's not as though we don't support users that need HCM. However it's not ideal that these are not linked into HCM. That said, I'd think that knowledge of ctrl/+ and ctrl/- would be common knowledge among browser users that need HCM.

Comment 7

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

(In reply to Joe Walker [:jwalker] (needinfo me or ping on irc) from comment #6)
> We have ctrl/+ and ctrl/- so it's not as though we don't support users that
> need HCM. However it's not ideal that these are not linked into HCM. That
> said, I'd think that knowledge of ctrl/+ and ctrl/- would be common
> knowledge among browser users that need HCM.

That helps, and http://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/ does differentiate between normal and large text. The contrast may still be too low though.

Comment 8

[Helen V. Holmes (:helenvholmes) (:✨)]

Hello! I'd like to be helpful in this bug, but I know nothing about Windows HCM.

What exactly happens in the HCM mode? Am I right in assuming the text size and AA contrast increases?

Comment 9

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

(In reply to Helen V. Holmes (:helenvholmes) (:✨) from comment #8)
> Hello! I'd like to be helpful in this bug, but I know nothing about Windows
> HCM.
> 
> What exactly happens in the HCM mode? Am I right in assuming the text size
> and AA contrast increases?

I don't think it changes the text size. I don't know what you mean by AA contrast. HCM are basically a bunch of OS themes, so they change all the system colors. Devtools don't use system colors, so unlike the rest of Firefox they don't adapt to OS themes.

Comment 10

[Sebastian Zartner [:sebo]]

(In reply to Dão Gottwald [:dao] from comment #9)
> (In reply to Helen V. Holmes (:helenvholmes) (:✨) from comment #8)
> > Hello! I'd like to be helpful in this bug, but I know nothing about Windows
> > HCM.
> > 
> > What exactly happens in the HCM mode? Am I right in assuming the text size
> > and AA contrast increases?
> 
> I don't think it changes the text size. I don't know what you mean by AA
> contrast.

I guess Helen means https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/#visual-audio-contrast-contrast.

So, I believe in HCM the different themes (light, dark, Firebug) should mainly use system colors as the rest of the UI.
They may still be different, though, i.e. dark-on-light for the light and Firebug themes and light-on-dark for the dark theme.

Sebastian