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Re: Mapping WCAG Success Criteria High Contrast Mode Testing on Windows

for

From: Patrick H. Lauke
Date: Aug 13, 2021 2:45AM

On 13/08/2021 09:10, Sudheer Babu wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> Hope everyone is doing well and staying safe!
>
> I have my team find out few defects on Chrome browser when some of the UI
> elements (radio buttons in the selected state) are not rendered as expected
> when High contrast black and white settings are applied.
> Can someone please explain how these high contrast mode testing can be
> mapped to WCAG 2.1 Criteria (1.4.11 perhaps??),
> and also any information on the HCM testing process and best practices for
> fixing such issues.

At a very high level, the answer is that normatively, HCM is not taken
into consideration for WCAG (as it effectively counts as the user
explicitly overriding the presentation defined by the author, which the
author often has limited control over).

There are various discussion threads here
https://github.com/w3c/wcag/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+high+contrast
and https://github.com/w3c/wcag/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+HCM and
so far that seems to be the consensus.

Of course, this doesn't stop you testing and reporting on bugs that crop
up in HCM anyway, but these would be above and beyond what is required
for a WCAG pass/fail evaluation (i.e. if something doesn't work in HCM,
it's not a normative failure of WCAG at the moment).

P
--
Patrick H. Lauke

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