Those of us who have monitors which aren't left at eye-bleedingly-bright defaults shouldn't have to suffer low contrast text (which is much harder to fix).
I find this argument unconvincing for the same reason that the answer to the musical loudness war isn't "turn your speakers down". When contrast is maximized 100% of the time, there's no room for emphasis.
I find your argument unconvincing too, because having your monitor set to a comfortable brightness was the norm before designers ignorant of brightness controls started ruining it for everyone else.
The "musical loudness war" is completely irrelevant and makes no sense in this context either. Turn your speakers down if your ears are hurting.
>The "musical loudness war" is completely irrelevant and makes no sense in this context either. Turn your speakers down if your ears are hurting.
Recorded distorted sounds are still distorted regardless of your volume setting. Loudness war making people's ears hurt isn't solely due to the volume. If you can't tell the difference between piss poor mastering vs something properly mastered and being able to recognize them when you hear them is one of those "ignorance is bliss" things in life. However, once you can tell, you can't not hear it once it's present. The only way volume fixes it is when volume is set to 0.
But the problem with the loudness war isn't the loudness per se, but the loss of dynamic range: if everything is as loud as it can be, there is no room for emphasizing anything.
It's like, if you are always shouting, you can never raise your voice.
Which is exactly what is happening with full contrast websites: if everything is at max contrast, there is no room for emphasis.
Maybe for text specifically you're right, but we use screens for other media like pictures and video. If we have to tone down contrast to make high-contrast text comfortable, we are also reducing contrast of other media, and this loss may be significant.
Now, if we had reflective monitors (like e-ink etc) we could just be comfortable with maximum contrast text (like printed text). I think the display technology is a problem here.
(But still: there are some books with yellowish pages which I find more comfortable to read than ultrawhite pages. Maybe such lower contrast pages are more expensive or something, or not adequate for all lightning conditions etc)
So for your analogy, would you say the solution for compressed dynamic range in music recording would be for artists to use, say, guitar distortion or other audio choices for emphasis in music rather than playing with loudness?
Those of us who have monitors which aren't left at eye-bleedingly-bright defaults shouldn't have to suffer low contrast text (which is much harder to fix).