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Re: Gray disabled icons and WCAG 2.0 AA contrast requirement

for

From: Patrick H. Lauke
Date: Oct 16, 2013 7:34AM


On 16/10/2013 14:05, Nancy Johnson wrote:
> Is there any new standard in creating icons to show a link or button
> is temporarily non-functional, and meets the color contrast
> requirement? Typically I would change the icon to gray-scale.
>
> On the sites I work on, I noticed several of these no longer meet the
> contrast requirement.

Note that, strictly speaking, inactive controls don't need to meet any
contrast requirements according to the exceptions on 1.4.3:

"Incidental: Text or images of text that are part of an inactive user
interface component, that are pure decoration, that are not visible to
anyone, or that are part of a picture that contains significant other
visual content, have no contrast requirement."

However, it's of course still good if you can achieve sufficient
contrast, while still making them noticeably different from active
controls (otherwise you have a whole other set of problems where users
can't tell active/inactive apart).

P
--
Patrick H. Lauke
re·dux (adj.): brought back; returned. used postpositively
[latin : re-, re- + dux, leader; see duke.]

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