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There is no “myths of color contrast accessibility”
A guide on picking the right set of colors for accessible components, bringing meanings around accessibility levels, along with some stats.
When you need to work on interfaces, color contrast is a real thing you have to take into account to make it accessible. You have the right to be afraid of losing part of the aesthetics of your beautifully well-designed interface, and you are right if you are used to a poor contrast ratio. Accessibility comes with its constraint, but not much more than UX (User Experience) Design.
Originally published at CreativeJuiz Blog on December 2, 2019.
Definitions
I would like to start with my definitions of Accessibility and User Experience. I know the definition of both is quite complex and not always shared by the experts, so sorry not sorry, I’ll give it a try.
User Experience
The User Experience is the feeling, the attempts, the hope, the actions, the failure and success, the frustration, the memory, etc. a person has with a product or a service. Depending on the goal you want to reach, this experience can be bad or good. Even with the idea of reaching a bad experience, it could totally be on purpose by the designer of this experience. Oftentime as a designer you tend to provide a memorable experience in a good way to make your users understand, use and love the product/interface. Making interfaces usable comes with the need to understand a specific group of people so that you can help them achieve a precise task with efficiency, effectiveness and satisfaction.
Accessibility
In our domain, Accessibility is the practice of making websites or application usable by as many people as possible. We often think it’s applicable to only people with disabilities, which is by definition the case, but it definitely benefits other groups of people in some specific cases or context.
Where user experience tend to satisfy a precise group of people, accessibility tends to include as many people as possible in a common good experience, but both are not mutually exclusive.
