Talk:Reading/Web/Accessibility for reading

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Discussions: Desktop Improvements • Accessibility for reading. If you would like to follow our technical work closely, this is what we're doing now.

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• Feedback on the functionalities we have already deployed,
• Expanding the list of existing gadgets and user scripts that are related to providing a better desktop experience.

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Why 'night mode' when it's called 'dark mode' everywhere else?

Hello

@SGrabarczuk (WMF): moved page Recommendations for dark mode compatibility on Wikimedia wikis to Recommendations for night mode compatibility on Wikimedia wikis with the reason "change of the term", but otherwise it is called Extension:DarkMode, Manual:Dark mode, Category:Dark mode, etc.

Also the HTML class is named "skin-night-mode-1", while "light" and "dark" seem to be normalised : W3C and MDN.

This is a bit confusing, and without a good reason, it should be avoided.

Regards, Şÿℵדαχ₮ɘɼɾ๏ʁ 01:48, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Please see Reading/Web/Accessibility for reading/Frequently asked questions. Jdlrobson (talk) 01:56, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Ah ah ah, I was expecting that it was because some people were afraid of the term "dark". Stop cringing, "dark" is neutral and just means "lack of light". Od1n (talk) 02:02, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Meanwhile, "day" and "night" sound inappropriate to me, as there is no strong relationship between the color theme and the time of the day. Most people set a theme and stay on it, whether it's day or night. And more simply, colors can be "light" and "dark", but colors are certainly not "day" or "night"… Od1n (talk) 02:23, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

@Jdlrobson : how many people decided that? You are the author of the page you quote, and I cannot find a single mention of this alleged issue anywhere.

If W3C, Firefox, Google [1], Microsoft [2], etc. choose "Dark", it is not likely to be a problem.

Why shouldn't Wikimedia follow the norm, given the confusion it will create?

A wider consultation needs to be carried out, because I think this is the decision of only a few people.

Regards, Şÿℵדαχ₮ɘɼɾ๏ʁ 03:30, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Hey @SyntaxTerror and @Od1n, thanks for your curiosity! I think you're right, "dark mode" is sort of a standard. But we wanted to try the day/night option (see the updated answer to the question What is the difference between night mode and dark mode?). We're currently testing the night/dark labels' discoverability and usability. If the results are conclusive, I guess we'll just follow them. So bear with us, we'll let you know when we get them! SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 22:40, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

@SGrabarczuk (WMF) thanks for your patronising tone! But where is the discussion leading to this choice ?

Give a link to it instead of posting the same link as above, leading to a page that seems to have been written only by Jdlrobson.

Or prove me that a single black/brown person has already found this offensive, in good faith ? Şÿℵדαχ₮ɘɼɾ๏ʁ 23:46, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

@SyntaxTerror, I didn't mean to sound patronizing, my apologies.

Taking two steps back, I know you're experienced, but I'm not sure how much you know about the Accessibility for reading project (A4R). In your first message, you pointed at an extension, so perhaps you're new to our little world (or context) of the Web team and its projects.

In general, from our perspective, the situation is as follows: this page and A4R are related because both belong to the Web team. Jon is in fact the tech lead for this team (Jon (WMF)), and when he's editing this page, he's doing his job. We update and refer to the recommendations for the purposes of the A4R project. If I'm not mistaken, the night mode built as part of A4R will marginalize the extension. (Edit: at least on the Wikimedia wikis; I'm not talking about third-party wikis using skins other than Vector 2022 and Minerva.) So the word in the page title follows the decision made for A4R.

But wondering how you may have found this page made me think: maybe the recommendations pertain to the concept of dark mode and may work just equally well with gadgets, the extension, browser plugins, and our latest feature, the only official night/dark mode for MediaWiki for desktop and mobile web. If that's true, I might move this page back.

But I wouldn't be doing that just yet because right now, we're trying to limit confusion. The team made a decision ("night" instead of "dark") solely for the purposes of A4R. We're not tied to it. We're now working on the FAQ for that project, and the (updated and corrected) direct answer to your question was given by our designer. In the FAQ, I've linked to the relevant Phabricator task, too.

Does this address your concern better? Thank you, SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 00:35, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

There is no discussion taking place in that Phab link, so I doubt it. Let me ask this from me too: Where can I see the discussion that led to this decision? Nardog (talk) 04:35, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

I think that accessibility implies "understandable by the broadest audience", so I would still opt for light/dark, as these terms are the most common (and even the "canonical" ones), and those that describe the most exactly (day and night being just a visual comparison). And again, there is no problem with the word dark, the fear of using is what causes the fear actually. Od1n (talk) 06:37, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

Also, if it's problematic in some languages, why not just let the translators for those languages choose whatever is more appropriate just in those languages? Why bend over backwards and retroactively change the English term, at the sacrifice of that which is more intuitive and easily understood? Nardog (talk) 07:59, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

@Jdlrobson, Nardog, Od1n, SGrabarczuk (WMF), and SyntaxTerror: Note: I moved this discussion from Talk:Recommendations for night mode compatibility on Wikimedia wikis to here, since it is unrelated to "recommendations for night mode compatibility". Thanks. SCP-2000 (talk) 04:41, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

FYI The relevant discussion #"Night_mode"_is_a_poor_choice. SCP-2000 (talk) 04:43, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

As a native Chinese speaker, I fully agree that "night" mode is more translatable compared to "dark" mode. However, from the readers' point of view, "night" mode may cause confusion for them as it is not a common term and has other meanings, such as dim light and blue light reduction. Since "dark mode" has already been used in several browsers and even in our Wikipedia apps, which have multiple language versions, I believe there will not be excessive difficulties in translation.

Weighting up the benefit and disadvantages, I would prefer to see "dark" mode rather than "night" mode in the interface. Thanks. SCP-2000 (talk) 07:07, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Agreed with @SCP-2000: "dark/light" mode seems to be standard across my OS, browser, other website preferences, and most desktop and mobile apps that I use (which is independent of how that is translated in other languages!). I realize that the mobile app has has a 'night' mode for some time, but that's definitely non-standard :) . Sj (talk) 22:58, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

Nocny/ciemny

@SGrabarczuk (WMF) przyjąć nazwę "ciemny" czy "nocny"? wargo (talk) 09:25, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

(Przeniosłem tu, bo jedną stronę dyskusji każdemu łatwiej obserwować i możemy prowadzić wielojęzyczne dyskusje.)

Dobre pytanie. Wobec angielskiej wersji jesteśmy zdecydowani, że na razie "nocny" i zmienimy to, jeśli testy wykażą, że "ciemny" jest bardziej zrozumiały. Ale w innych językach jesteśmy bardziej elastyczni, nie robimy dla nich testów i godzimy się na "ciemny", jeśli jest standardem. Moje tłumaczenie na "ciemny" jest 100% "na czuja" - bo wydaje mi się, że ta wersja jest bardziej popularna. Ale w Google'u "nocny" ma więcej wyników. Więc ostatnio trzymam się bardziej "nocnego". SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 11:44, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

Signature disabled

My user signature was recently disabled on English Wikipedia (it appears to still be working here, oddly). The preferences page indicates that there's a lint error related to night mode, but the actual documentation page says it's still undergoing testing and has a priority level of zero. I don't plan for my signature to display any differently in night mode — it'll still be white text on a dark background. It's not clear how I could fix this error, especially while staying under the 255-character length limit, so I'd appreciate it if whoever enabled this requirement could please roll it back until it's developed better. Sdkb ^talk 19:37, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

I have filed task T360797 for a related nesting error. Jonesey95 (talk) 16:53, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

@Sdkb: to fix this you need to add "color:inherit" in front of "background:linear-gradient" that should fix the issue (this won't change anything about the appearance). We are recommending that whenever background is defined, color should also be explicitly define so that night mode doesn't alter the color (in a similar way to how the notheme class has been used for apps).

I don't think this should trigger an error for signatures in the way it does so I've raised phab:T360796 to make sure this is reconsidered. Jdlrobson (talk) 16:54, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

This should now be fixed. Thanks for the report!

Note: this will still be flagged by the linter and this is intentional. I have clarified this on mw:Help:Lint_errors/night-mode-unaware-background-color#How_to_fix. Jdlrobson (talk) 18:26, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

About Accessibility for Reading

Why doesn't the Japanese Wikipedia write "About Accessibility for Reading" in Japanese? Ghost caterpillar (talk) 22:28, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

Hello @Ghost caterpillar, thanks for this question. I'm not sure I understand you, though. Are you asking about the Japanese translation of the page Reading/Web/Accessibility for reading? Or do you mean something on Japanese Wikipedia? SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 22:37, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

I'm sorry. I'll paste the link so you can move it.[3] Ghost caterpillar (talk) 22:48, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

Thanks @Ghost caterpillar. It would be good if this was fixed indeed :)

This is in English because it hasn't been translated into Japanese yet. Any Japanese speaker can add the translations here. Translatewiki is not a Wikimedia wiki, so a new account needs to be created first. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 16:33, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

Does translatewiki mean translation software (?)? Ghost caterpillar (talk) 23:23, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

Translatewiki is a wiki where the interface is translated. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 23:47, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

I got off topic. sorry.

Should I ask that it be written in Japanese after all? Ghost caterpillar (talk) 23:57, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

That's absolutely ok :) If you are a Japanese and English speaker, you can create an account on translatewiki, and add the translations yourself. Another way would be to ask someone else to do that. These translations are done by editors. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 00:05, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

Who should I ask? Ghost caterpillar (talk) 00:12, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

I made a mistake in the letters. sorry.

Because I'm using translation. Ghost caterpillar (talk) 00:15, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

Should I ask the administrator to fix it? Ghost caterpillar (talk) 00:12, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

Hey @Ghost caterpillar. No, anyone can create an account on translatewiki, not only administrators. So anyone speaking both Japanese and English could help. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 23:57, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

yes. Understood. Ghost caterpillar (talk) 09:33, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

I'll fix it someday. Thank you very much. Ghost caterpillar (talk) 09:35, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

Wikilinks in blue

Hello guys! We are also introducing dark mode on the Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia and I am honestly really excited about it. A colleague on our project told me that the wikilinks appear, as usual, in blue but in dark mode blue and black colour tend to blend together and make reading more tiring. Have you encountered the same problem? Is there any way to do something? Maybe, bringing the link to a shade of light blue or even pink... Cheers--Inokosni organ (talk) 22:55, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

Thanks @Inokosni organ. You're not the first one to point at this issue. @Msz2001 noticed that, too. I'll let our designer know. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 23:55, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

Thank you, Szymon! --Inokosni organ (talk) 00:00, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

@Inokosni organThanks for flagging this! It's a very valid concern. The answer to your question is yes, we have considered it. The links are a different shade of blue to compensate for the dark background. We built a new colour palette to make sure that all of the colour combinations in dark mode have at least a 4.5:1 contrast ratio per Web Accessibility standards. In some cases, the dark mode version of the pages is more accessible than the light mode version. JScherer-WMF (talk) 15:39, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

Automatic image adaptation

There is a site called https://invertornot.com/ that could be useful in automatically adapt images. It uses a small neural network (16MB) to classify images into whether they should have their hues inverted (for graphs or images of text, for example) or instead just be slightly darkened (for photographs of people or natural landscape). The API and model are open source and can be self-hosted - see https://github.com/mattismegevand/invertornot.

Found out about it on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39821632 today, which also has other useful tips, including using the CSS `filter: hue-rotate(180deg) invert();` for inverting images instead of having the API invert them for you. Telotortium (talk) 21:48, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

"void" displays on translated pages

hej @SGrabarczuk (WMF):  ! Forma void jakos dziwnie wyskakuje na stronie FR oraz inne strony tlumaczone. Mozna poprawic ? Dzieki.

..wasze pomysły wdź i podziel się z nami swoimi przemyśleniami! 2 Wprowadzenie# {{void|1= === Dlaczego nasza praca nad tym jest ważna ===}} W ciągu ostatnich kilku

--Christian 🇫🇷 FR (talk) 17:45, 17 April 2024 (UTC)