Changed table styling in readthedocs - accessibility

[Steph-Chong]

Recently (about a week ago), tables started rendering differently in readthedocs. The changes can present difficulties for people with colour blindness.

@tennlee and I spent a bit of time trying to figure out what had caused the change, and how we could modify or revert the change. But we were unsuccessful.

Changes to how tables render include:

• vertical lines (before there were only horizontal lines)
• background shading on alternate rows
• a blue line under the header row
• when you scroll over each row, it is now highlighted in purple (before there was no highlighting)
• when you mouse over hyperlinked text, it turns the text from blue to orange, against a purple background

When you mouse over hyperlinked text (so it becomes orange text on a purple background), Tennessee who is partially colour blind cannot see the text anymore. We figure if this is the case for Tennessee, it will be for other people too.

By any chance, does anyone know how this can be fixed?

[nikeethr]

https://pydata-sphinx-theme.readthedocs.io/en/stable/examples/kitchen-sink/tables.html

see v0.14* v.s. v0.15*

Options:

• find a way to revert to an older version (v0.14*), and raise the issue with the sphinx theme (if there isn't one already).
• use custom css to manipulate the colors: https://sphinx-book-theme.readthedocs.io/en/latest/components/custom-css.html
• use a different theme: https://sphinx-themes.org/

First two are temporary solutions, I don't think there's an "alternate" off-the-shelf alternative within sphinx-book-theme itself. Third is quite a big visual change I imagine...

[Steph-Chong]

Thanks very much for that information @nikeethr - much appreciated.

About 5 days ago, I spent some time trawling through documentation and change logs trying to figure out the cause and didn't manage to find that. (But I also only learned how to use a command line at the start of May, so I am very, very, very new at this!)

I checked the repositories for multiple parts of the software stack that helps put together readthedocs for scores, and didn't find any open issues on the topic. But maybe I looked at the wrong repos, or perhaps not enough time had passed for anyone to raise it. I guess it wouldn't hurt to look again, then raise an issue if nobody else has already done so.

[Steph-Chong]

In case it is helpful to anyone, here is how the tables used to render

[nikeethr]

Note: adding pydata-sphinx-theme==0.14.4 in https://github.com/nci/scores/blob/develop/docs/requirements.txt

fixes this. Alternatively changing the theme also works, but the notebooks are displayed better with the sphinx-book-theme.

[nikeethr]

side note: This is universally affected other major docs as well. E.g.: https://docs.xarray.dev/en/latest/api.html, and so far numpy/xarray and others have not reverted the behaviour yet.