Interfaces with little or no distinction between panes and different content

Hello low vision community group,

Modern interfaces like (but not limited to) Windows 11, the new Outlook, and Slack for iPadOS are moving to techniques where the whole screen is one or only slightly varied background color with only faint lines and spacing separating sections.  This has caused several issues for me which increase fatigue:

  *   It is difficult to visually focus on the primary area of the screen such as the message view - this causes my visual gaze to drift
  *   It is difficult to to tell where one pane ends and another begins.  This means it takes me longer to locate the first row in a table because I can't distinguish the headers from the content without reading them and I can't locate the main area without reading content to determine context

With older interfaces such as Slack on desktop the navigation area is a different background color and that helps to separate and keep my visual gaze focus on the content.  With classic colorful Outlook the tool pane and header bar are different shades which allows me to draw my attention directly to the start of the mailbox without difficulty.

Does anyone know of research or guidelines that address this profound change in interfaces?  Is anyone else running into these issues?

Jonathan