Products · Pattern or everyday thing
Low-contrast web design
Raised as a usability problem by 12 people on Hacker News over 17 years (2009–2025), in 12 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
Every issue, all time, most people first
Grey text is hard to read and fails contrast checksUnreviewed
20092026- Grey or thin low-contrast text is hard to read for long articles2025-06-30
- Grey text on light grey backgrounds is hard to read2024-09-18
- Low-contrast grey text forces commenter to inspect and recolour pages manually2022-05-20
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 12 complaints
- Grey or thin low-contrast text is hard to read for long articles2025-06-30
- Grey text on light grey backgrounds is hard to read2024-09-18
- Low-contrast grey text forces commenter to inspect and recolour pages manually2022-05-20
- Low-contrast text becomes hard to read on cheap or dim displays2021-12-19
- Low-contrast gray-on-gray text is unreadable without modifying CSS2020-08-30
- Grey text is hard to read, failing legibility and accessibility contrast checks2018-02-21
- Low-contrast text is hard to read, so the commenter turns off site styles2017-06-17
- Grey text is so light it strains the eyes to read2017-01-30
- Low-contrast text on web pages is unreadable for the commenter, causing ocular migraines2017-01-22
- Light gray text on white is hard to read and strains the eyes2016-12-19
- Dark-grey-on-white or off-white page colours make text hard to read, forcing copy-paste workarounds2016-01-30
- Low contrast text forces the reader to squint to make it out2009-02-05