Torey Adler

I’ve shared thoughts about visual accessibility before. This is basic stuff for web/app designers. In today’s puzzle, the circled letters are essential to completing the grid and I can’t see them. In dark mode, the circled squares are virtually invisible. Personally, I use dark mode because I do the puzzle when it comes out at night and I like to minimize my light exposure, but there are people who use dark mode to compensate for a visual impairment. It is a valuable accessibility feature. This is easy to fix. Make the circles yellow in dark mode so that they are visible. If you would like to replicate what I see, solve today’s puzzle on an iPhone 15 pro max with the screen brightness almost all the way down and the puzzle set to dark mode. There are other visual accessibility issues with your app, like how difficult it is to see the numbers, but this is a really easy one to fix, so it’s a great place to start. Thank you, Torey Adler - avid solver, currently on an 893 day streak.

Yet again, the solution depends on the circles which are INVISIBLE IN DARK MODE. Not sorry for the caps. This is basic accessibility, folks. Use contrasting colors. It was solvable, but unsatisfying. The gimmick was completely unguessable without being able to see the circles.