There’s two aspects of color we want to focus on - color contrast and using more than just color to convey information. Using color accessibly benefits people with low vision, color blindness, certain learning or developmental disabilities, or anyone trying to read your content in low light or bright sunshine.
First, you want to use light text on a dark background, or vice versa, to ensure that there’s sufficient contrast between the text and the background. WebAIM’s Color Contrast Checker Bookmarklet (
https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/bookmarklet) allows you to quickly check the contrast of any page content by selecting the foreground and background colors with an eyedropper tool.
Second, you want to use more than just color to convey information. Add context, texture, or use bold or italicized text along with color. It’s not about not using color- it’s about using more than just color!
This video was recorded with a Learning Glass in the Instructional Media Studio at the UAA/APU Consortium Library. If you want to record this kind of video for your courses, contact the Instructional Media Studio at uaa_instructionalmedia@alaska.edu.
