Low-vision accessibility issues in Reason UIs

[kallen]

One of my biggest disappointments with Reason is that many of the UIs are close to unreadable for anyone with impaired vision. The issue is lack of contrast between text and background. For example:

Combinator Editor: black text on jade green background
Europa: red text on black background
Umpf Club Drums: blue text on black background
Umpf Retro Beats: red text on black background

I find these UIs next to unusable, even at 140% zoom. I just downloaded the demo of Umpf Retro Beats and with my vision, the text of the sample slots is unreadable. Very frustrating, because this RE is something I could use.

Please, please, please, UI designers: text/background contrast is an issue for many people. At least provide an alternative skin for people who don't have perfect vision. Black text on white background might not look as cool, but would be much more usable.

[djsmex]

Yes, accessibility should be an important part of any UI design!
Personally my limited sight means almost any text is difficult to read regardless of contrast and size and due to almost no screen reader support, usability of Reason has got worse in V12.
This is why I have been pushing for things like top menus for CV/Audio rooting, extending the Remote sdk to cover everything from the browser, tool window, sequencer and tool bar. So that third party solutions can help make Reason more accessible like my ReDrum and ReTransport speech proof of concept scripts.
Similar third party scripts could be used to offer better contrast displays of the rack devices and other UI elements, if only Remote sdk gave full control over Reason.
There are a few third party assistive softwares that can alter your screen colours, like Supernova magnifier but these can be quite expensive and will likely need different colour pallets for different rack devices. Perhaps an option could be a preference within Reason for high contrast although it may be problematic for some graphical objects to know what is foreground or background. IE: when a RE developer uses a single graphic layer to form both the background and text labels etc.
You can try out my speech scripts here: Please note these are proof of concepts and not commercially available, just something I wrote in my own free time.
https://nostex.co.uk/ReDrum/
https://nostex.co.uk/ReTransport/

[RobC]

Ah yes, better accessibility is something I want to consider when developing REs in the future.

Any more info on that?

I have good vision, but I prefer things darker, and have to wear shades even during winter, otherwise it gets uncomfortable. Though I never went to get diagnosed.
On my sAMOLED phone screen I use black background and white text whenever possible, and I can read it in tiny-tiny size.

Question is, which is better and more readable for you?

[jonnyretina]

One of my biggest disappointments with Reason is that many of the UIs are close to unreadable for anyone with impaired vision. The issue is lack of contrast between text and background. For example:

Combinator Editor: black text on jade green background
Europa: red text on black background
Umpf Club Drums: blue text on black background
Umpf Retro Beats: red text on black background

I find these UIs next to unusable, even at 140% zoom. I just downloaded the demo of Umpf Retro Beats and with my vision, the text of the sample slots is unreadable. Very frustrating, because this RE is something I could use.

Please, please, please, UI designers: text/background contrast is an issue for many people. At least provide an alternative skin for people who don't have perfect vision. Black text on white background might not look as cool, but would be much more usable.

You might be better off using a different DAW, Reason simply isn't suited to accessibility in the way something like Ableton Live is. It has too much detail in the interfaces and no easy way to provide an alternative and more accessible appearance. I highly doubt that will change any time soon.

[kallen]

I use Reason Rack Plugin inside Ableton Live, and yes, Ableton is much more accessible in terms of text sharpness and contrast. They use a smooth, scalable font for everything, which I have no trouble reading. (I usually zoom Ableton to 150%.)

Most of the devices in Reason are OK too, if I zoom to 140%. The main ones that I find unusable are Europa and Umpf Retro, with dark red text on a reddish black background. I wear strong glasses, which have a fair amount of chromatic aberration, meaning different colors bend at different angles. I suspect the chromatic aberration creates a fair amount of fringe or halo at the red-black boundary, making it hard to focus. There's also the "dot-matrix" font that's inherently harder to read.

It's so frustrating to have graphic design issues make a UI unusable, when the device is perfectly fine technically and sound-wise. These problems could so easily be fixed with better text contrast, light text on dark background or dark text on light background. Maybe different skins? At the very least UI designers need to give a little more consideration to accessibility.