accessibility-guidelines

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Text contrast

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Summary

Make sure that text has enough contrast against the background colour.

Text must have a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 (or 3:1 in some cases) against its background colour.


Requirements

‘Large scale’ text is defined as text that is larger than 18pt/24px, or 14pt/18.5px and bold.

Why?

Official wording in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines

1.4.3 Contrast (Minimum): The visual presentation of text and images of text has a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1, except for the following: (Level AA)

See the W3C’s detailed explanation of this guideline with techniques and examples.


Guidance for Design

User tools like Sketch’s Stark plug-in, Colour Contrast Analyser to make sure that text has sufficient contrast.

More guidance for Design


More info

Sources

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This document is in beta. Help us by reporting issues via Github or email