Now more than ever, we need to be designing websites with accessibility in mind. As a web designer or developer, one of the easiest yet most crucial aspects of web accessibility you can control is ensuring the color contrast on your site meets accessibility guidelines and standards. Proper color contrast is essential for readability, especially for users with visual impairments, and it helps make your site more inclusive.
In this post, I’ll walk you through how to test your website’s colors for accessibility and share a couple of tools that I personally rely on to ensure that every color combination used on my sites meets the necessary accessibility requirements.
Understanding Accessibility Guidelines for Color Contrast
When it comes to web accessibility, there are three levels of conformance you’ll want to keep in mind: A, AA, and AAA. These are part of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and pertain to various design elements on your site. For color contrast specifically:
- Level A: This is the most basic level and has the fewest requirements.
- Level AA: This is the level most commonly aimed for in web design and ensures a good balance between design and accessibility.
- Level AAA: This is the highest level of accessibility and includes more stringent guidelines.
For text, WCAG’s AA level requires a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text. The AAA level requires a ratio of 7:1 for normal text and 4.5:1 for large text.
Testing Your Colors for Accessibility
On my website, I have a color palette set up within my GeneratePress global color settings. To ensure that these colors meet accessibility standards, I use an online tool called the Accessible Color Generator by Learn UI Design. While there are many color contrast checkers available, I find this one to be the easiest and most straightforward to use.
Here’s how it works:
- Select your color: Copy the hex code of the color you want to test (e.g., your primary brand color).
- Input your foreground color: Paste the hex code into the generator’s foreground color field.
- Analyze the results: The tool will immediately show you whether the color contrast passes WCAG AA and AAA guidelines when placed against white or dark backgrounds. If the color doesn’t meet AAA guidelines, the tool will recommend a similar hue that does.
For instance, if I take an orange color from my site and test it against a white background, the tool might indicate that it passes AA guidelines for large and bold text, but not AAA guidelines. The tool will then suggest a darker hue of orange that will meet the stricter AAA standards.
Testing Multiple Color Combinations
What if you want to check how multiple colors interact with one another? Let’s say I want to use orange text on a dark blue background. I can input both colors into the foreground and background fields of the color generator. The tool will show me if this combination works for large, bold text or if I need to lighten or darken one of the colors for smaller text to remain legible.
This testing process allows you to tweak your color palette while ensuring that you don’t compromise on accessibility.
An Extra Tool: Snippet Club’s Dynamic Color Matrix
For a more advanced setup, I highly recommend using Snippet Club’s dynamic color matrix if you’re working within GeneratePress. This tool integrates with your GeneratePress customizer and pulls in all the colors you’ve added to your global color settings. It then automatically generates a color matrix, showing which foreground and background color combinations pass accessibility guidelines.
Here’s how it works:
- The matrix displays your primary, secondary, and alternate colors in a grid.
- Each cell of the matrix represents the accessibility of a foreground and background color combination.
- If a cell is blank, it means that combination doesn’t meet accessibility standards.
- You can toggle ratings to see which combinations pass AA or AAA guidelines and which should be used for graphical elements only.
This tool saves a ton of time because it gives you an instant overview of which color combinations are accessible. You can keep this matrix open in a separate tab while you design and reference it whenever you need to ensure that your colors meet the required standards.
Accessibility Comes First
While it might be tempting to stick with a color combo you love, accessibility should always come first. If a combination doesn’t meet the necessary contrast guidelines, it’s best to seek an alternative that is close enough to your desired look but still accessible. Prioritizing accessibility means you’re designing with all users in mind, making your website inclusive to a wider audience.
Final Thoughts
Ensuring color contrast accessibility is one of the simplest ways to make your website more inclusive, but it’s often overlooked. Using the Accessible Color Generator and Snippet Club’s dynamic color matrix, you can quickly and efficiently verify that all your design choices meet accessibility standards.
Remember, good design is inclusive design. By following these practices, you’ll not only improve the look of your website but also ensure that it’s usable for everyone.
If you found this post helpful, feel free to share it or reach out with any questions. Let’s keep accessibility at the forefront of web design.
