Respecting your users’ preferences

Over the years, I’ve had many battles about accessibility ‘modes’, and why they’re a terrible idea. That’s another article for another day, but one thing ‘mode’ advocates often come back with is that we already have modes for things like colour and motion, so why not just add more? Our users have already told their operating system how they want things to work, whether that’s darker colours, more contrast, or less movement. We should respect those preferences as they browse the web. The browser allows us to check for various operating system preferences, for example: prefers-color-scheme, for Dark Mode prefers-contrast, for Increased Contrast Mode prefers-reduced-motion, for Reduced Motion Mode It’s important we listen to what our users tell us and design accordingly. And if respecting our users isn’t reason enough, there are rulebooks to back it up. What the standards say Both the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and the European accessibility standard EN 301 549 address…