WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: 1.4.1 use of color for state indicator

for

From: Mallory
Date: Mar 9, 2020 10:35AM


I have failed that kind of inverse switching under Use of Color. If it's really supposed to be "Use of Color Unless A Minimum 3:1 Contrast" then someone should change it to that. And they should remove this group of people from the Benefits section:
...
"People using text-only, limited color, or monochrome displays may be unable to access color-dependent information."

None of those use-cases will be helped by some minimum contrast level, regardless of whether colour is a hue or a luminosity or a bottle of Toilet Duck.

For a client who wants to actually be accessible to real-life users, I would absolutely create a bug ticket for that (and I have, and I will continue to do so). Someone already mentioned a user stylesheet. I'm a Windows High Contrast user, but more broadly the concept is "limited colour palette" (and does not have to imply a high contrast at all. You can use limited colour palettes to *lower* contrast, which some people require).

I run into "pressed/selected items are denoted by a change of colours only" aaaall the time (esp custom dropdown menus), and in practice you have to turn off your WHC or personal stylesheet or whatever in order to visually determine that state.

[I said a lot more things, then took a swig of whisky and deleted it]

mouth-foamingly yours,
_mallory