There's a limit, though. I end up browsing most modern websites at ~60% zoom, because the text is so huge I find it distracting. Luckily the browser zoom feature is pretty great these days, so users can view at any size they like.
I'm 29 and my eyesight with glasses is ok. Been wearing 'em for 22 years.
But really the worst offenders are gray text on lighter gray background websites. Whyyyy designers why?
It's not that I can't read it at 100 it's just tiring and I have mild astigmatism so I get eye strain.
https://blog.attackthefront.io/your-body-text-is-too-small-5... makes a pretty compelling argument that 18px is the new minimum, and I think I'll be following this advice on any of my future sites.
Because A E S T H E T I C
I've yet to see any designer articulate a reasonable defense of this shit.
Color calibration.
On a good monitor, 10 or 12bit depth, 1000 to 10000nits of contrast, which designers tend to have, black text on white background has such a high contrast that it creates actual pain, and migraine.
So they use dark grey on light grey instead, and then, for them, it looks exactly like newspaper text.
A customer on a cheap, garbage monitor – maybe just 6bit of colors, 50nits of contrast – on the other hand, can’t even reach the contrast of a newspaper if they’d go full black on white contrast.
The contrast between the darkest black and the brightest white on a cheap monitor is equivalent to the contrast ratio between 40% (approx #666666) and 60% grey (approx #aaaaaa) on a designer’s monitor.
You know what happens with those gorgeous monitors with perfect contrast and beautiful calibration when it's sunny outside and my blinds aren't down or I'm physically outside with my laptop? They turn flat black. Can't see shit.
Also designers sometimes push the contrast thing too far. In both directions.
#000000 on a cheap screen is equivalent to #666666 on an HDR screen, #ffffff on a cheap screen is equivalent to #aaaaaa on an HDR screen.
So if a designer uses something that looks exactly like newspaper contrast to them, it’ll look unreadable on a cheap screen.
Maybe that means you need to turn down your screen's brightness.
Because then displaying color-calibrated content on your display (such as movies, games, photos) is also completely distorted.
Instead, we need a way to specify CSS colors relative to a colorspace and contrast ratio.
It's called sRGB and it supposedly has a "black point" which is not entirely black. Nobody uses it though, on photos it would be useless. Also for me black on white is perfectly fine in a well lit room. White on pitch black is indeed problematic. Anyway, it could be a user/browser preference instead of a designer preference.
Lowering brightness shouldn't distort color-calibration too. You are supposed to match your brightness to the surrounding lighting too.
Correct, but it requires recalibration if you lower the brightness (as no screen has a perfectly flat curve)
I've settled into using the menu option "View..Page Style...No Style" on noisy pages.
Now I need a "No Style" browser that finds the beginning of the narrative automatically.
Honestly, that one button fixes almost every UI/UX problem I encounter. I never use Reader Mode, I never open developer tools, I just nuke styles, read the site and move on.
Right-click, inspect. Uncheck font-color setting on article!
How bad is your eyesight with corrective lenses?
For example, I tend to put my phone screen very near my face in the evening.
No such thing as perfect eyesight when you've been wearing glasses since you were 8 ;)
I read it as "send offending designs to..." - like it was a 'name and shame' kind of site instead of the reasonably helpful resource that it is.
My apologies.