Choosing the color palette for a site used to be entirely up to the graphic designer and maybe management, based on current fashion or a whim. Well, no longer—colors, and specifically the contrast between colors, is actually an accessibility issue. Graphic and web designers need to learn which color combinations are accessible and which are not as they work on sites.

Color Contrast Standards

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has researched and established some recommendations that will help to ensure that the contrast between background and foreground (text) colors is enough to ensure legibility for the visually impaired. Its recommendations require that there be a sufficient color (hue) and brightness (lightness/saturation) difference between the text and the background. More about color contrast standards can be found here: W3C Color Recommendations.

A Tool That Helps You Meet Color Contrast Standards

Luckily, you don’t have to dive into the W3C’s recommendation on this issue. www.snook.ca has a tool that takes two colors as input and computes whether they are suitable for a background/foreground color combination: Snook Color Contrast Tool. Using this tool, you can quickly determine whether the color combinations of your next site design will be suitable for a general audience. For example, I discovered that the color of my links is too light against a white background to be legible to those who are visually impaired or using a greyscale monitor/device. Since I’m not 100% happy with the design as it currently is anyway, I will probably be changing the color of my links to improve legibility and accessibility, and I encourage you to follow the W3C’s recommendations as well.