CODEWITHSUNDEEP
user-interfacecolorsaccessibilitycontrastwcag2.0
samnymr
samnymr

Reputation: 91

WCAG 2.0 Guidelines about user-configurable colours

Our application has an area where users are able to change background colours, text colours and other things.

I'm wondering that as we are trying to make our application AA compliant, would this feature have to be removed? As we don't have much control on what colours they pick and the contrast that they would choose.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 68

Answers (3)

unor
unor

Reputation: 96737

If a user chooses an inaccessible contrast, this user might not be able anymore to change it again. While this might be the user’s "fault", your site would still be inaccessible to this user.

The difference to the Technique G156 (Using a technology that has commonly-available user agents that can change the foreground and background of blocks of text) is that changing the colours in the browser settings doesn’t change the browser interface itself. So even if users end up with an inaccessible contrast, they are still able to change it back.

You could implement one (or multiple) of the following ways to prevent that users make your site inaccessible to themselves:

  • Changing the colours doesn’t change the colour settings page itself and the links to it. So even if a user sets everything to black, there will be a (still visible) link on every page that leads to the (still visible) settings.
  • When a user changes the colours, check the new contrast value and give a warning if it doesn’t meet the WCAG 2.0 guidelines.
  • After changing the colours to a likely inaccessible contrast, show a dialog (with accessible contrast) on an affected page that asks if the user wants to revert the change.
  • Show a demo page before saving the new colours. Bonus: make it so that the user can only accept the new colours if this user is able to read the text.
  • After a colour change, send an email with a reset link.

(assuming that your default contrast meets the WCAG 2.0 Guideline 1.4.3)

Upvotes: 0

Adam
Adam

Reputation: 18865

As long as your default background and foreground colors for visitors satisfies 1.4.3 Contrast minimum then it's ok.

The technique you are using is an approach of one the suggested techniques for this point: G156: Using a technology that has commonly-available user agents that can change the foreground and background of blocks of text

Upvotes: 1

Skerrvy
Skerrvy

Reputation: 912

Are they configuring their own settings, or are they configuring settings for other users? If they are configuring their own settings and the initial settings meet the wcag 2.0 guidelines (so they are able to use the customization tools), there shouldn't be an issue. In theory it's actually a great practice, as users will be able to customize the settings to their specific needs.

I would suggest reading into the Understanding Conformance section about 'Alternate Versions' for more information.

Upvotes: 1

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