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I enjoy reading the Android Enthusiasts Stack Exchange site, and also the email newsletter. I am not completely color blind, but I am considered color challenged.

For me, the text colors and text colors and shading make it very difficult for me to read the site. The only way I can describe what I see is that it looks as if all of the colors have been heavily bleached. I have used three different browser with the same results. All the text is almost completely washed out. The shaded items are in pastels and for me it is very difficult to read. There is almost no contrast between the foreground colors and the background.

Can anything be done to help make the site more accessible for color blind / challenged users?

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    Sorry, what site are you talking about?
    – Sklivvz
    Jul 2, 2014 at 23:14
  • Sorry about that here is the web site. The emails are also a problem. android.stackexchange.com/questions/75297/…
    – user263120
    Jul 3, 2014 at 1:02
  • the only way I can describe what I see is that it looks as if all of the colors have been heavily bleached. I have used 3 different browser with the same results. all the text is almost completely washed out. The shaded items are in pastels and for me it is very difficult to read. Almost no contrast between colors and background.
    – user263120
    Jul 3, 2014 at 1:13
  • This might help: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/315249/…
    – John Locke
    Sep 9, 2018 at 22:19

1 Answer 1

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Using MSE as an example, there are some color choices that fail WAI guidelines. You can check these with on of the many contrast checkers, or as a browser plugin.

  • Body text is OK (#444 on #ffffff)
  • The here state on the menu fails (#8adff9 on #1da9da)
  • The light grey for the time, asked, etc fails (#999999 on #ffffff)
  • The link colors in the right hand side for related questions fail (#4e82c2 on #ffffff) some of the tests.

There are also some instances where color-only is used as an indicator. For example, the accepted answer indicator in questions lists both fails contrast (#4c9067 on #e4f9d3), and also uses a green hue. The roll states on many links are a very subtle color shift, without another visual indicator (such as an underline).

For those who want to simulate these problems, there are several apps available that demonstrate the most common forms of color blindness (I use one called Chromatic Vision Simulator), and there are also plugins/filters for Photoshop that do the same thing. It's rather enlightening.

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  • I have lots more links to specs / resources / tools, but they are on my work machine. I will try to edit them in tomorrow.
    – mpdonadio
    Jul 3, 2014 at 0:29
  • What about other sites? Of all of the sites in the SE family, I'd consider MSE the least important.
    – psubsee2003
    Jul 3, 2014 at 0:34
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    @psubsee2003 The lowest-contrast SE site is probably Academia. See its WAVE report.
    – user259867
    Jul 3, 2014 at 0:37
  • @psubsee2003 I haven't tested any recently, though in general, I have noticed that Meta sites tend to have less contrast than their Main counterparts. As the place where users go to get help, I would argue that accessibility is more important on the Metas.
    – mpdonadio
    Jul 3, 2014 at 0:39
  • @MPD Meta sits may be more important for members of the site but I'd guess that 99% of the traffic comes from users who aren't members, so meta sites are irrelevant to them.
    – psubsee2003
    Jul 3, 2014 at 0:42
  • @psubsee2003 Saying that a particular site doesn't have to be accessible because of the perceived audience is a bad way to approach the problem. In this specific case, we want to encourage people to read and participate in Meta so the sites get better. In the general sense, the assumptions are probably wrong. I doubt many people thought about the blind community using sites like YouTube when they first came out, but the studies of how they do are very interesting to read.
    – mpdonadio
    Jul 3, 2014 at 15:42
  • @MPD the only point is most of the traffic is from non-members of the site who just come in via google. This is a fact. These users don't care about MSE or the per-site metas or even know they exist. And even if they did know, they wouldn't help make the site better because they aren't members and only use SE sites to get info. Of course we should try to make all sites equally accessible, but in my opinion main sites would make more sense to focus on first due to the higher level of traffic.
    – psubsee2003
    Jul 3, 2014 at 15:51

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