Pygments accessible themes

[trallard]

A while back we discussed improvements to the syntax highlighting used in JupyterLab. Since JupyterLab uses pygments as its default it is worth creating a set of accessible (i.e. meeting WCAG colour contrast criteria) pygment themes

Proposed steps/deliverables

• [x] #39 To start with, we could release an accessible-pygments package based on the a11y-syntax-highlighting themes developed by @ericwbailey

  • As pygments is also the default tool used by Sphinx (and derivatives such as JupyterBook and Furo) it is a good opportunity to help with contrast issues not only within Jupyter but also within the Sphinx doc ecosystem

• [x] #40 Second, we can start working on our jupyterlab-accessible-themes extension - with inspiration from (jupyterlab-fonts)[https://github.com/deathbeds/jupyterlab-fonts]

  • The first iteration is - adding the accessible syntax highlighting themes

While @isabela-pf is wrapping up other areas, such as the UI suggestions for Zoom fixes, @steff456 can start exploring porting @ericwbailey's themes to pygments. And when Isabela has more capacity, she can help with the points below and double checking everything is ok with the above ☝🏽

Another bit - I'd like to create contrast grids for the themes and also publish them with the themes themselves (i.e. using something like https://contrast-grid.eightshapes.com/)

Other themes/implementations to explore

• [x] #41
  • high contrast themes
  • Verify the "accessible themes" suggested by VSCode, namely:
  • GitHub: Accessible to most forms of colourblindness and matches the themes in GitHub's settings.
  • Gotthard: Optimized for approximately 20 programming languages. Blinds. Created with Deuteranopia in mind and possesses a high contrast colour ratio.
  • Greative. Considers both colourblindness and light sensitivity.

Some of these styles are also optimised for colourblindness and light sensitivity, so it is worth considering. And ofc because I am biased, and I made sure that the colours in pitaya-smoothie are WCAG compliant and colourblind friendly too, I'd also like to propose adding this to the package

Other bits

1. I created a new repo for this work: https://github.com/Quansight-Labs/accessible-pygments
2. The JupyterLab extension should live in this repo (https://github.com/Quansight-Labs/jupyterlab-accessible-themes/)

[ericwbailey]

Love that y'all are doing this. Definitely let me know if and how I can support you.

[trallard]

Thank you @ericwbailey - we'll definitely be in touch if we need some of your sage insights ✨