Not sure what could be done either. it's white but acting like any black content put on high contrast. Most of our UI is white anyway, this is just a larger surface. As long as the contrast is good, it's all that really matters.

> As long as the contrast is good, it's all that really matters.
Untrue. There are a wide range of needs.

The issue is that most content is black text on a white background (something that literally causes me physical pain*) but the launcher is the opposite. There's now NO way to avoid large sheets of glowing white in my display (other than not using the launcher). 

My only real option is to minimize everything, toggle high-contrast off, use the launcher, then toggle high-contrast back on. But even THAT doesn't work since whatever launches is likely to have a bright background.

It's not the end of the world for me since I rarely use Android apps and can launch everything else I want either from the shelf or omnibox, but it's going to be a big deal for some people.

Maybe the answer is a more selective high-contrast mode? Over to dmazzoni@ for thoughts.

*I don't have a diagnosed medical condition. My eyes are just really sensitive to that sort of light saturation, especially when allergies get bad. There ARE people with medical conditions that lead to extreme photosensitivity who struggle with this much more than I do.

> As long as the contrast is good, it's all that really matters.
Untrue. There are a wide range of needs.

Then let's solve it, the bug doesn't say it causes accessibility issues, it just says it's "blindingly" white. I interpreted that as being uncomfortable yet still accessible (even without accessibility needs one might dislike white backgrounds, especially in low light). Excuse my ignorance on the matter.

Solution might seem to be special casing the launcher, like you describe, to use customized colors.

One questions for accessibility, how does Chrome handles that for Black website turning white ? Why is it an issue for the launcher over content? Haven't this problem been raised before for web content and potentially solved?

Ugh! Reading back over my comments here I see that my effort to be clear on my use cases caused my language to be a lot more forceful and abrupt than I intended. Sorry about that. I'll try to be more careful. I've been slipping on that a lot lately. :-(

The content issue is largely unsolved as well. My personal approach is to either:
1: remember which sites I use have a dark background and then minimize everything else and turn off high contrast before going to one of them...
or 2: Just squint and curse when I blind myself

2 is a lot more common. :-)

My IDEAL solution would be for high-contrast to ONLY affect content and for the state to be per app/tab and remembered across visits. I'm not sure that works as well for other high-contrast users tho.

"High Contrast" in its current implementation seems like an overly simplistic solution to a serious accessibility need. Simply inverting the colors results in mostly black backgrounds, but also ruins any photographic content and situations where colors convey meaning.

Is there any possibility of implementing a more comprehensive solution that would  actually increase visual CONTRAST without distorting colors?

Dark backgrounds are desirable for many reasons and could be a component of a rich enhancement feature.

> Is there any possibility of implementing a more comprehensive solution that would  actually increase visual CONTRAST without distorting colors?

Yes! http://go/chrome-highcontrast

Try running Chrome with --blink-settings=highContrastMode=3 and follow  http://crbug.com/685242

When this ships it will work in all web content. Anything built with Views should just either work okay with inverting, or add some custom handling.

In the meantime is there anything we want to do for the launcher? I'm unassigning myself from this bug but feel free to ping me on the other.

vadimt@ why did you add Restrict-View-Google here?

Another thought is that "Night Light" could actually do smart things with white backgrounds and alleviate the need to use high-contrast mode for light content and move it back to what it was designed to do, which is creating high contrast :).

This will also help with other black system features (e.g. shelf, wallpaper picker, and maybe even upcoming work on quick settings).

re #13 I suspect it was done accidentally when all of the launcher bugs were mass edited. I'll wait for him to confirm though in case I'm wrong.

omrilio@, are there any remaining AIs for you here?

Ping

I was actually just having a discussion about this with abodenha@ today.
In general, the right approach would be to build a "don't blind me" mode for the device rather than changing behavior for high contrast mode which is really useful for a11y reasons. 

That being said, we still don't have a proposal for that and it will take time. Let's keep the issue open on my plate until we find an owner for it.

I agree -- this should be solved at a higher level with an OS-wide setting, not just in the launcher.