The Importance of WCAG Accessibility in Web Design

When creating a website for any client, one must always take into account WCAG accessibility guidelines that inform web designers of how colors and font sizes should be chosen so that a wide variety of users can easily make out the content. Because there are different kinds of color blindness among the various potential customers perusing the website, certain combinations of colors between background gradients and foreground text will come across as far more illegible to some users than to others.

Web designers who produce work representing particularly well-known clients can potentially paint both themselves and their clients in a less-than-flattering light if they have white text overlaid upon a gradient with bright colors. This is not to mention the potential legal trouble that may arise if someone who may need the content in question is not able to read it because of a personal disability.

When adhering to the guidelines, many websites should strive to at least be "AA-compliant," and a stricter "AAA" version of those guidelines exists for site designers working on behalf of mainstream companies. Since it is not always clear where it is that the contrast between a background color scheme and the foreground text starts to enter "compliant" status, a free online resource located at accessible-colors.com provides a very helpful service that makes the necessary evaluations.

On this site, the user can input hexadecimal values to bring up separate colors for both the background and the text, and the simulated text's size and boldness can also be adjusted. The site automatically grades the chosen colors and text dimensions in terms of "contrast ratio" to determine whether the text can be seen by the broad majority of the presumed audience. Regardless of whether the user has the site grade a proposed set of parameters by either the "AA" guidelines or the "AAA" ones, the site will attempt to generate multiple adjusted alternatives if the user's own submitted set of parameters is found to be lacking in contrast ratio. The site only proposes changes to brightness so that the user's color scheme can remain in spirit. For more information click here https://www.reddit.com/gallery/p3iana.