popcodeorg / popcodeorg/popcode
Improve syntax highlighting color constrast
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- Dominant language
- JavaScript
- Stars
- 191
- Forks
- 143
- Avg merge
- 4d 11h
- Merged PRs (30d)
- 5
Description
Inspired loosely by the idea behind colorblind-wombat-dark-syntax, improve the color contrast of syntax highlighting so that it is more accessible to students with various forms of colorblindness. As noted in the above linked article, most syntax highlighters need more 7 colors, so this will likely not be perfect, but at a minimum we can improve the contrast for syntax highlighting.
More research is probably needed to figure out good colors for the white background popcode uses, but here's a starting point on color palettes for colorblindness. Specifically, the 12 color palette looks very promising:

Concrete proposal is to roll our own ACE theme based on the 12 color palette, avoiding the lighter/lower-contrast tones (so we’d probably have about eight to work with). Looking at the built-in ACE themes, most appear to only be about 100 lines of CSS, so this seems pretty practical. And building our own from scratch removes a lot of the unpredictability associated with trying to adapt an existing theme.
Of course from an implementation standpoint we should be able to just write appropriately-scoped rules right into our own stylesheet.
Contributor guide
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First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Research direction
Start by reviewing the built-in ACE themes and the project's own stylesheet to locate how syntax-highlighting colors are currently applied. Research the linked colorblind palettes and compare candidate colors on the editor's white background. Done means a scoped custom ACE theme or stylesheet rules provide visibly improved contrast for colorblind users.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- css, javascript
- Domain
- accessibility, design, frontend
- Issue type
- Feature
- Difficulty
- 4/5
- Estimated time
- 3-5 days
- Activity status
- Stale
- Clarity
- Mostly clear
- Newbie friendliness
- 38/100