Starting your design journey may feel like solving a Rubik’s Cube — complex at first glance but quite manageable with the right guidance. Whether it’s about setting the mood, conveying messages properly, or evoking emotions through your design, a few ticked boxes can help you in the long run.
Fulfilling certain requirements doesn’t only work for ADA compliance but also makes your design more inclusive. Around 350 million people in the world experience some form of color vision deficiency (CVD).
Accommodating these people opens up your content to a wider audience, improves user experience, and increases traffic to your webpage. If implementing color blind accessibility seems like a demanding task, here’s a breakdown of the dos and don’ts for you!
What Are ADA-Compliant Colors?
For implementing color blind accessibility, every shade, every contrast, and every design choice counts. According to the WCAG (web content accessibility guidelines), your color choices should prioritize clarity for users with color vision deficiencies.
WCAG compliance ensures that designers meet colorblind accessibility needs, opening their content to a wider audience. This means ADA compliance isn’t just about meeting legal standards but more about crafting a digital experience that everyone can appreciate.
ADA Compliance Checklist
According to the ADA compliance checklist for websites, there are four main categories: Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust.
Colorblind accessibility falls under the first category. This category ensures that the content is accessible to the senses (sight, hearing, touch, etc).
Color Contrast
Perceivability’s key element is sufficient color contrast. This ensures that the text is distinguishable from the background.
How does it help? Sufficient contrast improves readability for users with low vision or color blindness.
According to WCAG compliance guidelines, a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text is required.
This means the brightness and color difference between the text and its background must be distinct enough to be seen by those with visual impairments. This improves clarity, makes your design more accessible, and creates a better experience for everyone.
Color Choice
The right color choice can make a huge difference for individuals with vision impairments. For example, if your design has light text against a light background, people with low vision would find it challenging to read information from your site.
Similarly, if the layout doesn’t have a contrast, those with low vision might abandon your site or have difficulty navigating it. This is the daily reality for individuals with visual impairments.
The right color choice can differentiate between inclusion and exclusion, clarity and confusion. It’s not just about aesthetics anymore; it’s about accessibility.
The wrong color combinations can create barriers, making essential information and navigation elements elusive for those with visual impairments.
Choosing and Implementing the Right Color Palette
For inclusive designs and colorblind accessibility, you must choose and implement the right colors.
How do you find the perfect balance between aesthetic appeal as a designer and accessibility? Here are some accessibility solutions to help you create inclusive digital experiences!
1. Start With Contrast
No matter which color palette you pick, focusing on contrast can keep you on the right track for making accessible designs.
Your text must stand out against the background to boost colorblind accessibility. You should aim for a contrast ratio of 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text.
Using a color contrast checker can measure this for you. High contrast maximizes readability and makes the text legible for those with low vision, too.
2. Use Colors Wisely
Wisely using colors means that we need to stop relying on a color palette to convey information. Adding text or symptoms boosts clarity and creates a cohesive visual experience.
Remember that backgrounds work as a backdrop. It’s wise to use solid backgrounds to make other content pop more. If you use gradients and patterns, the content must be clear and visible.
3. Focus on Text Color
When it comes to legibility and readability, text color is of utmost importance. The text color should contrast well with the background color.
For optimal readability, we suggest you keep dark text on a light background or light text on a dark background.
4. Add Shades and Tints
Playing with shades is a designer’s favorite part of work! To maintain colorblind accessibility, playing with the right shades and tints can, in fact, create an accessible design.
For example, add black to lighter backgrounds, add tints to the primary colors to increase the palette’s flexibility, and play around with contrast until you get the most colorblind accessible palette.
5. Always Prioritize Readability
For text-heavy designs, always prioritize readability over design. You can, of course, keep the complicated designs intact as long as they don’t affect readability.
Accessibility Solutions for ADA-Compliant Color Selection
Implementing colorblind accessibility is no game. It requires experimenting with different shades, contrasts, and ratios.
Sometimes, certain color palettes may seem accessible to you, but they could present challenges to those with color vision deficiencies.
Accessibility solutions such as Accessibility Spark are designed exactly for such scenarios. When you can’t pinpoint an accessibility issue, certain tools and resources will do it for you!
Accessibility Spark
Accessibility Spark is one of the smartest tools that improve accessibility by making over 100 adjustments to your design.
This AI-driven accessibility solution helps you adhere to the WCAG compliance guidelines and makes all the necessary changes to the content. It works well as a color contrast checker for your content.
Once installed, Accessibility Spark scans the website to identify accessibility issues such as poor color contrast, low readability, etc. Within 48 hours, all accessibility issues are identified & adjusted.
The adjustments also include:
- Resizing text for readability.
- Enhancing color contrast between text and background.
- Adjusting text spacing
- Adjusting dark contrast, light contrast, and color desaturation
The current customizable profiles can help those with the following:
- Low vision
- Color blindness
- Cataracts
- Impaired vision
When you implement the right color for creating an inclusive design and utilize resources such as Accessibility Spark, you leave no boxes unticked!
Accessible Web
Accessible Web is another handy tool for checking color contrast. This color contrast checker has an intuitive interface, which makes it simple for designers to test different color combinations.
If you want optimum accessibility for your website, worry not. You can input specific color codes and play around with the color selector tool to find what works best for accessibility.
Accessible Web also has an advanced scanning feature that delves directly into your website’s pages. It checks for contrast ratios and makes your web design more inclusive.
WebAIM Contrast Checker
The WebAIM Contrast Checker is a game changer for achieving ADA compliance. With a special focus on color contrast, WebAIM verifies your design for contrast, ratios, and readability. It checks whether the text and background on the websites align with the WCAG compliance guidelines.
WebAIM color contrast checker has a user-friendly interface. The tool evaluates color schemes, offers insights into contrasts, and provides other recommendations for implementing color.
Utilizing such tools and resources helps make your content design more accessible to people with minimum effort. No more questioning whether your design is inclusive. Run a simple scan and sit back for professional insights and recommendations.
Compliant vs. Non-Compliant Designs
Color palettes are key elements of design. Understanding compliant vs non-compliant designs can make you more aware of what works and what doesn’t.
| Aspect | Compliant Design | Non-Compliant Design |
| Color Contrast | Uses a contrast ratio of 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text, per WCAG compliance. | Fails to meet contrast ratios, making text unreadable, especially for users with color blindness. |
| Color Blind Accessibility | Color choices are distinguishable by users with color vision deficiencies. | Relies on indistinguishable color combinations, such as red-green or blue-yellow, causing confusion. |
| Visual Indicators | Include non-color indicators (such as underlines, icons, or patterns) to support color-reliant information. | Solely depends on color to convey meaning, leaving critical information inaccessible to some users. |
| Readable Text | Ensures text over images or colored backgrounds is legible by adding overlays or adjusting contrast. | Places text directly over complex images or low-contrast backgrounds, making it hard to read. |
| Interactive Elements | Highlights links, buttons, and controls with sufficient contrast and clear focus states. | Buttons and links lack clear differentiation, making navigation difficult for users with disabilities. |
| WCAG Compliance | Follows established accessibility guidelines to create inclusive designs for a wide audience. | Ignores WCAG standards, leading to the exclusion of users with disabilities from accessing content. |
Wrapping Up
Now that you understand the pivotal role of color choices, implementing colors, and using contrast ratios, it’s important that you take a step towards inclusivity. Make your next design inclusive and more welcoming to a wider audience.
If you’re new to this, emphasizing and following WCAG compliance guidelines regarding colors can give you a head start in the right direction.
In today’s digital world, it’s more about fostering environments that are more welcoming, have fewer to no barriers, and accommodate everyone. If you’re unsure of your design, use accessibility solutions such as Accessibility Spark to test your designs for inclusivity and accessibility!