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Re: table styles and color contrast issues

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From: Steve Green
Date: Apr 21, 2023 2:51PM

By default, the text colour is black in data cells, so banding does not cause any colour contrast issues unless you have changed the text colour. If you do that, any problems are yours, not Microsoft's.

By contrast, the text colour of header cells is white by default, which has insufficient colour contrast with almost all the built-in table styles. This is very much a Microsoft problem. Again, it has nothing to do with banding.

The background of column and row header cells is darker than data cells in the built-in table styles. Saving as PDF doesn't change the colours.

Some form of horizontal banding can benefit screen magnifier users, especially if there is a lot of white space between columns. You can try to avoid that in your table design, but sometimes the nature of the data makes it unavoidable. I have a preference for alternate colours on each row, but a horizontal line between rows can be sufficient as long as it is thick enough and has enough contrast. Banding or lines can also benefit people with dyslexia, who can have a tendency to accidentally skip up or down a line when reading across a page.

That said, I have encountered some screen magnifier users who don't like banding. I suspect they are the minority, but I don't have a big enough sample size to be sure. And of course designers absolutely hate banding because the most important thing is the purity of their precious design. Some will tolerate horizontal lines, but in the absence of user testing evidence it can be difficult to get any of this accepted since there is no requirement for it in WCAG.

Steve Green
Managing Director
Test Partners Ltd