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Better reading on the web
You may have heard that a recent survey of the top one million websites found substantial usability problems, such as poor color contrast for text. And In truth there is a problem, but not the way you might think.
WCAG 2 and automated testing
WCAG 2.1 is the current set of guidelines published by the World Wide Web Consortium, covering the design and display of web content, with the aim of making the web accessible to all. A well-known, independent accessibility organization performs an annual survey of one million of the top websites’ home pages, testing for conformance to the WCAG standards.
The results of the latest survey seem bleak: it is claimed that some 84% of websites have poor contrast for text, indicating impaired readability. This seems like an outrageously high figure. And certainly, there is more to this story.
Anniversary for the future
As it happens this week marks the three-year anniversary of an infamous thread on the subject of color contrast, which the author posted on the W3's WCAG GitHub repository. That thread led to a lengthy research project dedicated to improving readability on self-illuminated…