Apple [and others] need a dark mode for people like Molly Watt

This is a follow up post to Solving Molly Watt’s Problems. If you haven’t read that post yet, go read it now and then come back. 🙂 It provides the background to this post on why we need dark mode to be an inclusive design consideration.

In brief, Molly has Usher Syndrome, which is a condition that has left her deaf with 5–degree vision in one eye.

Molly is still a visual person. One of the problems Molly has when interacting with digital services is high contrast, specifically white backgrounds with black text.

I’ll get onto why I think Apple [and others] should be responsible for solving this problem. But first, the steps that have led me to that conclusion (I am a designer of things that end up on GOV.UK).

GOV.UK pride themselves on championing the needs of users, designing inclusively and building digital services that are accessible to everyone. Yet, the website is practically all white background with black text. It creates too much glare and makes it impossible for Molly to focus. It’s unusable.