Cannot see the diff anymore in the Light Modern theme

[shirleydejong]

Type: Feature Request

I've setup the new Light Modern theme and wanted to see the changes I've made via a diff. But since I'm colorblind, I cannot see the difference anymore between the old (reds) and new (greens). Can you maybe adjust the colors a bit so I - and other people that are colorblind - are able again to see the diffs. Thanks! :)

VS Code version: Code 1.78.1 (6a995c4, 2023-05-04T09:48:08.683Z)
OS version: Windows_NT x64 10.0.22621
Modes:
Sandboxed: Yes

[daviddossett]

Thanks for reporting! We'll get this fixed. Is there any particular type of colorblindness I should be aware of here?

Did the old themes (Light+, Dark+) work out ok for you for reviewing diffs?

[shirleydejong]

Hi David, I'm color blind for reds and greens (Deuteranomaly). I've used the Light+ theme before and with that theme I can easily distinguish reds and greens in the diff. I've tried it on several displays with the new theme, but of none of these displays I could see the difference between both colors.

[shirleydejong]

Maybe in addition, the same applies for the dark themes. For the old Dark+ theme I could see the difference, for the new Dark Modern I couldn't.

[daviddossett]

Thanks, that's helpful. I'll explore a few options and will report back here for your feedback 👍

[hbons]

Hi @shirleydejong 👋

I've tweaked the theme slightly: pulled the reds slightly towards magenta, and the greens towards blue. Using a colourblindness simulator I can see more contrast between the added/removed lines.

Here's a screenshot with the old theme on the left, and the updated theme on the right:

Simulated:

Let me know if this is a step in the right direction.

edit: here's the dark theme too.

[shirleydejong]

Hi @hbons, for this Light theme it's easier to see the differences. But for the Dark theme it's still a bit hard (for me). Thanks for looking into this!

[daviddossett]

@hbons one thing we could do in the meantime is to fall back to the colors used in Dark+ until we're confident about a solution here. That would just mean we remove the overrides from the Dark/Light modern theme files.

[hbons]

Created #188668 to revert the colours for now until we find better options. We can leave this issue open.