Reading/Web/Accessibility for reading/Updates/2024-05

April 2024: User Testing and Beta Feature data now available, first version of dark mode now available on mobile

Dark Mode

Dark mode is now available to logged-in users on the mobile site (Minerva skin only)!  To access dark mode, you must be opted into advanced mode for mobile.  Then, you can select “dark” from the list of color options.  (Note: “automatic” will follow the preference of your device). Our goals for the early rollout are to:

  • Show what we've built very early. The earlier you are involved, the more your voices will be reflected in the final version
  • Get your help with flagging bugs, issues, and requests
  • Work with technical editors to adjust various templates and gadgets to the night mode

Go to the project page and the FAQ page to see more information about the basics of this project.

Appearance Menu

We have performed usability testing on the appearance menu - the menu that will house the typography, width, and dark mode.  The goal of the testing was to determine whether the menu is easy to use, and whether the names of the different settings are intuitive to most users.  From this testing we learned:

  • No significant usability issues were found
  • Users generally preferred to refer to a “dark” color scheme or “night” color scheme.  As a result of this finding, we have changed the name of the feature back to “dark” color scheme or dark mode for short.  
  • Users had a hard time finding the menu icon once collapsed.  As a result of this finding, we have added a notice that informs users of where the menu has been collapsed to

The full results of the testing are available here.  

Typography

As the next step in the development of the accessibility for reading features, we have also been tracking the usage of the new menu as a beta feature.  From this data we learned that “standard” was the most popular option to select.  We also saw:

  • About 55% of clicks to the new menu were for a font size that was larger than the default (either standard or large font sizes)
  • The majority of the clicks, 46.7%, were for the “standard” font size.  

The full results of the beta usage analysis are available here.