WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: 1.4.1 use of color for state indicator

for

From: Patrick H. Lauke
Date: Mar 9, 2020 11:32AM

On 09/03/2020 16:35, Mallory wrote:
> 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.

I would rather guess that when writing the benefits, people got very
overzealous and did not consider the more fundamental
meaning/implications of what they were writing. Back in 2000 or whenever
that SC was crafted.

Which is why I've pressed the matter there in github.


> 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.

If you go down the WHCM/custom stylesheet route, though, ANY kind of
visual distinction (even without color - whether you take it as "hue
only" or the stricter "hue and luminance") such as borders, extra
outlines, CSS-generated symbols, etc will potentially/usually fall by
the wayside. And then the SC really becomes "you must denote this in
pure HTML text". Which is not what the intention of the SC was. But
agree that this is where we have the "WCAG vs actual real-life
accessibility for all users" tension, as usual.

P
--
Patrick H. Lauke

https://www.splintered.co.uk/ | https://github.com/patrickhlauke
https://flickr.com/photos/redux/ | https://www.deviantart.com/redux
twitter: @patrick_h_lauke | skype: patrick_h_lauke