Re: tty[1-6]: colors a negative accessibility/usability trend

["Pádraig Brady" <P@draigBrady.com>]

On 12/02/15 09:45, Felix Miata wrote:
> Red, blue and green in particular produce poor contrast on the black
> background of a typical framebuffer screen.

Agreed, though the bold variants are better.
Better again are 256 color variants.
The Linux console lagged xterms in support, but does support it now.

> As these screens are configured
> as functional twins of those modes we find ourselves in at rescue time, it
> amounts to an unfortunate and unnecessary accessibility/usability obstacle
> that is IMO is a subset of a larger general problem found under the moniker
> A11Y[1].
> 
> A very good, very recent article discusses the mindset that leads to default
> settings that thwart use by the disadvantaged[2], however slight that
> impediment may be.

I agree completely. color is useful but one has to be very careful
in how it's used. ls --color for example is too aggressive IMHO,
and I adjust to highlight rather than color with:
  http://www.pixelbeat.org/scripts/l
I've been pusing back upstream against adding new color combinations.

> With util-linux >= 2.25 we can turn colors off via
> 
> 	# touch /etc/terminal-colors.d/disable [3]
> 
> for some commands, but far too few. It should apply to all, including many
> outside the purview of util-linux, and more importantly, do so by default.

coreutils will keep this scheme in mind too.

thanks,
Pádraig.