As mentioned previously, some years ago I had to have necessary optical surgery for a medical condition. And since then, I often get ‘halos’ around brighter lights. The first I really noticed it was at the movie theater, where there was a glow halo around the entire screen. This also is a serious issue when driving at night; people will not turn their brights off, and if they’re following me close, or oncoming on a non-divided highway, it can be blinding. The ‘brightness wars’ between headlights doesn’t help! Took me years to get comfortable driving at night again. This was a known risk of the procedure, and I accept that this was always going to be something I had to adapt to.
But what I didn’t expect is how much difficulty I’d have with text afterwards. Since the surgery, dark themes (light text on dark background) are far easier for me to read since the surgery. And it is utterly shocking to me how many websites and software programs simply…don’t have it as a native option. It’s honestly incredible that Google doesn’t have a native dark mode option for Google docs on web, especially since they recognize this is a need because they have it in Android apps. And they’re far from the only offender; I’d honestly say more than half of what I use has no native dark mode theming. (I decided against creating a list for my own privacy).
Now certainly, there are adjustments you can make. With web browsers, there are add-ons like Stylus, or Dark Mode, that allow me to adjust colors to some degree. These, however, have massive performance hits to functionality, sometimes up to 10 seconds per webpage load, times every link clicked. And that assumes I can even use extensions; this isn’t feasible at work! I’ve taken to wearing wraparound blue-blocker safety glasses to dial down some of the brightness.
Even at work when there is Dark Mode, it can have issues. One system originally was set up that the Dark theme had grey text on black background. When I asked, they said it was a bug and would be fixed in the next patch to the system. And it was…but the patch went uninstalled for over a year, which was only discovered when I asked again and they said, “Well, it was in this patch” but then found it wasn’t updated.
And another system has a better dark mode, but for security, it idles me out multiple times a day as I’m working elsewhere, and every time I log in again, it resets back to the normal, light theme. (Though, I suppose this proves that the Dark Side does not actually have cookies!)
American healthcare is terrible, sure, and assistance for people with disabilities or limitations can be contentious and spotty, and sometimes infeasible, sure. Modifying a building for handicap/wheelchair compliance is certainly expensive and protracted. But a dark mode can’t possibly take that much time to add on the back end for billion dollar companies. Pathetic.
Are you also a Dark Sider? blogsquawk@vershaft.com
-Arrow