iCal 5.0 - washed out dates unreadable

The Lion installation brought along the default monitor calibration.

I would re-calibrate the color on your monitor and at the end of that procedure change the gamma to a darker contrast to suit your eyes.

You could also use the Universal Access feature to adjust the contrast or flip to White on Black temporarily when viewing iCal.

Thirdly, in iCal you can press ⌘+ (Command plus) to increase the font size. (⌘– [ Command minus to reduce the font size.])

In System Preferences:

#1 • Displays / Color tab / Calibrate.

#2 • Universal Access / Seeing tab

-Alan

I have the same problem. Like all the new features of ical but very hard to read the grey (silver) font on the calendar for times and dates especially in the month view. Hopefully Apple can allow us to change the color of the font.

Our office is experiencing the same symptoms. ICAL is useless on our imac I5s due to background lines delineating days and weeks along with the labels being virtually unreadable. User input for events and to-dos are redable but useless since they simply appear on a white background. We have attempted to calibrate our displays without success. Universal access is equally without benefit. Becasue of the importance of calendaring, we are considering moving all of it to MS Office for MAC Outlook. Apple needs to either change the screen templates to black and white or provide contrast control within ical itself and/or allow the user to change the background color so that the template will be readable.

I should note that the same problem occurs on our older IMacs as well as our MacBook Pros, but not to the same degree. On these machines the ical grey lines and labels are barely readable, but still not useful.

Does anyone have any other thoughts about curing the problem. I would prefer to use ICAL but without resolution of the problem I will move to Outlook.

In my last email I neglected to say that we are using OS 10.7 and ICal 5.0

God willing and a fair wind to Java

I have the same problem, don't the developers at Apple check things out with those who have sight and age difficulties. Fortunately I have BusyCal which is as clear as a bell and you can edit the text.

But this problem is just one of a string of naff changes in Lion

I'm having the same problem and am waiting hoping they fix it quickly. Almost impossible to use ical with no visible dates/times etc.

I solved the problem by going into system preferences>universal access>seeing> enhance contrast and moving bar to far left- normal.

It's not 100% clear but now at least I can use ical again and see scroll bars etc. etc.

Tzipora

I very very seldom respond to a thread on someone else's question, but i gotta tell you, ical is really a problem for my eyes. i wear glasses and i cannot see the date numbers or the even words, also setting type size does nothing to help the problem. it actually makes it worse. (I am having the same problem with the scroll bars in mail etc. I actually started the process of uninstalling lion and reinstalling 10.6. This is just sooooo bad. it is actually unhealthy for me to try to squint at this greyed out info in all of these apps. I did get rid of the horrible brown leather stuff "skin". Hopefully someone at apple is reading this stuff.

Michael

Michael, try what I recommended above: system preferences>universal access>seeing> enhance contrast. Move the bar right to the far left.

It's made quite a difference not only in iCal but other apps who's scroll bars were washed out.

It's not really really strong but much much much better.

Tzipora

Yes, thanks very much. i did do that and it actually helped in other apps even more than in mail. i actually had eye surgery in LA just 2 weeks ago so the issue is even more accute than ever. i never thought i would actually be ****** at apple for such a crazy thing. it hurts to use any of my basic apple apps. the drs told me to just go to bed and forget it for awhile. i guess i will. thanks for your kind response.

michaell

The washed out "aqua" text is a theme for Apple web site and products. I think this look and feel is an indication that Accessibility training is needed for Apple software disigners. The contrast is far below the recommended accessibility standards for displaying text. Users should not have to adjust System Preferences to use an Application. iCal is not very readable for sighted users, let alone visually impaired users. Apple needs to find a design that has readable text contrast. Please fix this soon.

when i checked there the bar was already moved to the left. ICAL dates are so grey I cant read them