A few weeks ago at Hang Time LA, we heard from Pablo Stanley on designing for accessibility. He brought up some great resources for designers such as Contrast—an app for quick access to The Web Content and Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) color contrast ratios. At Dribbble, we know that designing for accessibility is super important. That’s why the Contrast app has been a great tool for us to use and implement into our workflow.
With over 200 million people in the world who are visually impaired, the Contrast app aims to help designers achieve accessibility standards when it comes to choosing color and contrast in a design. The app acts as a small menu bar which you can integrate into whatever design software you’re using. But you can even move the window around and use it as a floating menu bar wherever else you’d like!
To use the app, you simply enter your design’s color hex codes manually or use the app’s built-in color picking tool to select your colors. From there, a contrast ratio will appear and indicate whether or not your design meets accessibility standards for color contrast.
With technology being a major part of our everyday lives, we’re huge advocates for keeping accessibility in mind in our work here at Dribbble. Our Senior Product Designer Rogie King loves using the Contrast app and shared a few words on it:
” I love menubar apps, and Contrast is no exception. As a simple utility, it blends into my design process and helps me to ensure that accessibility is always a priority when designing for Dribbble.com.
We strongly encourage you to download the app or use a similar tool when designing! And if you’re interested in learning more about what it means to design for accessibility, be sure to check out Pablo Stanley’s article Designing for accessibility is not that hard. He briefly goes over some basic accessibility guidelines and you’ll also find other helpful resources in there. Now let’s go out there and make the web a more accessible place!
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