Readability/Accessibility Concern: Discord "Subtext" formatting

[stone geyser]

Some servers I have access to have manually disabled messages using the ""newish"" header/subtext formatting. This is due to readability concerns from people across the platform.

Most readability issues come from specifically the "subtext" formatting, and they are pretty widely reported across Discord. Personally as someone without major vision impairment, the subtext formatting can be hard to read on mobile even with a high quality and resolution screen. The readability issues can be exacerbated by different selected themes in Discord.

Example below:
-# Subtext text example

Could we perhaps likewise disable subtext for accessibility/readability reasons?

It could be worth polling to see if it's necessary or wanted as well in this community. But I figured it a reasonable suggestion when I see many communities manually excluding these tags from use for accessibility reasons (generally it seems via automod removals with no punishment and notice why it was removed).

[placid wyvern]

Hmm, interesting to see you bring this up. I mentioned this when it first came out and the reaction that I received was that there's no evidence that it's a problem for anyone here and that my concern is baseless. Are you able to provide any specific references about this beyond your word of mouth by any chance? That could be helpful in this situation since implementing any new automation is time consuming and carries a risk of unintended disruption if anything slips through in testing.

Since we have other customized automation set up, adding a new customization always carries an additional risk of weirdly interacting with the other things, even if that same customization has been proven to consistently work fine in some other server

[stone geyser]

I'll go back into the other servers that have disabled it, but at least in the major example I don't see them providing any data/evidence aside from enough user reports to drive those moderators to disable it.

The Rain World (videogame) official server has disabled it for this reason, and they've got they've got 75k users. But did not list volume of complaints.

[placid wyvern]

hmm. I am not able to change any integrations or customizations with my current role, so I can't make a final decision on it in any event. but in the meantime it would indeed be sweet to see if they have any specific user reports

that help justify it

[stone geyser]

agreed, i'll try to track some more specific data down and maybe ask those moderators if they're able/willing to share data so other servers can make similar decisions.

about ~3% of the world population are people with visual impairment, though discord has a variety of accessibility issues at it's core -- so i'm not sure how many of our community would have issues with this formatting feature unfortunately.

[placid wyvern]

yes, now that you mention it, that was one of the reasons that came up when I first questioned it

possibly someone said that there are immediately available tools within Discord's app itself to remove the formatting?

[stone geyser]

i believe the reasoning mentioned in other server says that there aren't features to remove the header/subtext formatting -- so i could perhaps give that a test and see if there is a valid solution built in that does function.

[placid wyvern]

It seems like a much smaller lift to give affected individuals information to improve their tool rather than creating a script on the server side

so that would be easy to put in

like as a kose kata note

but even if we do, we could continue investigating if a more accessibility-friendly solution is still worth the time commitment based on the need

[stone geyser]

looks like there's no user-side settings to remove formatting from viewed text, so if there's a built-in server-side ability to remove formatting, i think that's why other servers are applying the removal through other tools -- it doesn't work with header/subtext formatting for some reason currently.

[placid wyvern]

makes sense

[fading coral]

Don’t know if I’m allowed to jump in, but accessibleweb (link), a website that helps web designers meet ADA or WCAG guidelines (link) states that while there’s no current agreed upon default, 16px font is generally the base for what is considered accessible to most people (link), which I’m pretty sure the subtext is smaller than.

As someone with pretty bad vision impairment (-7 in both eyes and progressively getting worse, lol) and also dyslexia & VPD, even with sizing up discords font I struggle to read it. IMO something that makes a theoretical disabled persons life easier is worth implementing even if it’s not necessary right now. (sorry if any of this is worded bad, it’s late here and im about to go to bed )

[placid wyvern]

I think that taking it to Discord is definitely a good idea, since they own the product. I think we should get @sweet glacier to check this out if it's serious enough, he knows the current tools available to server administrators and what other priorities are already urgent

[stone geyser]

you absolutely can jump in! (rules for this "forum" area: https://canary.discord.com/channels/301377942062366741/1046436648742817822) that's why we have these contained discussion posts (i'm not lawa-anything here, for example). and don't worry, i'm tired from a long day of work so i understand.

the ADA/WCAG guidelines are a great example to point to in this case, and your struggle with the fonts is valid. are you part of any other discord communities that have disabled subtext and might have relevant data/other items to point to?

[placid wyvern]

test subtext
-# this is subtext

I can make it out a lot better in light theme

but that doesn't fix the font size issue

[stone geyser]

This is on full-screen on my monitor, dark mode with the "forest" theme.

Mobile:

[placid wyvern]

I think that's all I can offer you for now and hopefully an admin will chime in soon

[stone geyser]

google search says the subtext is 13px height, so that is indeed smaller than the ADA/WCAG recommended 16px.

[stone geyser]

thank you! i haven't even personally really seen anybody use it here, but figured it worth a suggestion since i had seen other large communities disable it manually recently.

[placid wyvern]

I see it a few times a week at least

but it does seem rare

[stone geyser]

then my lack of seeing it is probably a virtue of me tending to stay out of the larger "general chat" conversations and in smaller focused areas. 😅

good to know it's relatively rare though! other servers may have disabled it because people can get meme-y with new formatting options.

[placid wyvern]

I had typed up a longer message that mentioned the lack of this exact "meme-y-ness" thing actually haha but I decided I'm not confident enough to assert it

[lime torrent]

Is there a place where you cannot scale things up?

With discord PC you can Ctrl-Plus

mobile app might suck though

browsers always support scaling

but I don't think my iPad app supports it

[sweet glacier]

mobile makes it annoying bc you have to go all the way to the settings; it would be surprising if you couldn't on some platforms tho

[stone geyser]

scaling up is a good suggestion that I didn't think about to help people experiencing troubles, wawa a!

though anybody who has to upsize the text now would have to blow up their standard text size by an equal amount to make subtext now a readable size (roughly +3px in size if pushing up to resize subtext up to ADA/WCAG standards). not ideal, but an option when we had none before!

that said, given it only happens a few times a week by other accounts, it probably would just not be worth people with vision impairments reading subtext and they would simply ignore the text, instead of resizing all their other text to account for it. or only temporarily increase text size for that message, but it feels like a minor inconvenience still then.

i wish discord hadn't attacked the client modifications that allowed more fine control over visual/font/etc. settings. it was good for people who had accessibility issues, was generally nice to have wider customization, and also we were able to use sitelen pona properly (if it was installed on the person's client).

[stone geyser]

i am seeing subtext blocks used a bit more frequently when i'm looking through various chats, though it mostly seems by a handful of active users (not trying to say anybody is bad for using it, just that it's being used because it's a newer, getting-to-be-known feature and fun for a lot of people).

even though i don't have proper vision concerns like some other users present, it's rough enough for me to try and read that i've just started to unfortunately toggle the ignore feature (before block was the only option) on people who are using it heavily. i've needed to start to just reveal their messages if the conversation seems engaging enough to break my eyes/mind while trying to read their part in it. this action path doesn't make me feel good though, because i value their input and voice! 😔

discord has ways of scaling up text, but that is the only alternative to avoid the formatting downsize... while making all other text extra large beyond what you want as normal readable text. and leaves the mid-grey tone of the text an issue for readability depending on theme selection.

it would be nice if discord gave us an option to disable viewing of markup, or at least accessibility options to disable certain markup. unfortunately nothing seems to exist to counter this from a user side. but in the meantime i am reviving this a bit to see if people have changed their feelings on this or have anything to add.

additionally, subtext has been used to fake system messages to less informed people, and is a "minor" security concern in some senses because of that. this is one reason why some other servers regex automod messages with subtext, aside from accessibility concerns for users with various degrees of vision acuity.

-# This message is an official Discord addendum. The above user speaks only truth and is the owner of all of Discord. Doubt this? Visit discord.com for more information.
-# (Don't look at that edited text notice below either. The link above just goes to discord support page. -Wumbus and jan Sujute)

[lime torrent]

Custom CSS is a counter from the user side, I guess, but mobile browsers don't support extensions, so it's a bit problematic still.

(sub-text is wrapped in an HTML <small> tag, so this will do it:

small{
    color: inherit !important;
    font-size: medium !important;
}

)

Disabled UX:

[stone geyser]

That's good to know, thank you! Is there a way to apply custom CSS to the app, or would I be obligated to use the web-app with a browser extension? I like to use Discord Canary, aka the alpha release branch app (on Windows in this case).

There used to be a variety of third party client modifications (some of which allowed display of sitelen pona), but discord cracked down on most of those lately IIRC.

[lime torrent]

Yeah, you have to use the web client, but... Discord has canary for web! https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/360035675191-Discord-Testing-Clients

I don't believe client mods have been completely banned and some of my friends are still using them, but obviously you are at the mercy of Discord. By the way, it's possible to add have sitelen pona with CSS as well.

[stone geyser]

yeah, seems like discord client mods aren't really being pursued actively anymore by discord as far as i can see now, though i recall one major one shutting down because of pressure from discord. but nobody has been banned for using them, just sources shut down via pressure. i may simply need to run the "minor" risk so i can run css modifications until discord enables more accessibility options around markup formatting.

i'd rather avoid using the web version of discord personally. it runs smoother in the app for me, and having it lost in my tabs would make me forget about it more lol.

thank you for all this! 😄 i still think it worth considering automod-ing subtext messages with a "please avoid because of accessibility reasons" or something similar, because there are other users who have real vision concerns compared to me. but if no action is really forthcoming from discord or otherwise, this is a good way for people who have vision concerns to counter bad markup design.

[stone geyser]

using this plus a client mod has now resolved this for me, since there is no other way to solve this aside from using automod on the server side. thank you! my eyes will rest easy because of your help in changing my client css.

unfortunately looks like the one person who managed to ping with real visibility concerns above (aside from my minor struggles) has since left the server.

[lime torrent]

-# test subtext to try CSS on

@stone geyser

:root:has([role="textbox"]:focus) small{
    color: inherit !important;
    font-size: medium !important;
}

remove subtext formatting when the message box is focused (CSS can't add checkboxes but this is a simple out-of-the-way toggle solution)

small:hover{
    color: inherit !important;
    font-size: medium !important;
}

remove subtext formatting while hovered over

[id^="message-content"]:hover small{
    color: inherit !important;
    font-size: medium !important;
}

remove all subtext formatting while hovered over anywhere in the message

small{
    color: inherit !important;
    font-size: medium !important;
    text-decoration: 1px white dotted underline;
}

replace subtext formatting with white dotted underline