RE: Non-text contrast research

Hi Everyone,

Hopefully people will get a chance to review the slides and/or video I posted from Michael Gilbert and the team at Google [1]. Michael is now on this email group so can join in.

I thought I start the comments with what I took way from the results:


  *   The structure of the criteria text gives us some flexibility, where it says “Visual information required to identify user interface components and states”, if research finds that X, Y & Z other factors make the contrast irrelevant in a particular scenario that can be addressed fairly easily.

That is already the case for buttons where the understanding doc [2] says buttons don’t require borders.

  *   The remit of the guidelines is to prevent barriers that affect people with disabilities, it would be useful to have a control group or a comparison with other usability testing to help work out which factors impact people with low vision, compared to a general audience. (Not that it is a deciding factor, but it’s part of the equation.)

  *   I fully appreciate that more examples would help, but to make that a manageable task it would help to know which types of component people have struggled to apply the criteria to. Presumably the examples in the understanding document [2] cover some cases, which other components are people concerned with?

  *   This criteria (non-text contrast) is focused on having contrast for certain aspects, but it does not require particular design approaches/affordances. E.g. if an input doesn’t have any border it isn’t required to have a contrasting one.
However, lack of affordance is an issue for many folk (particularly with cognitive impairments [3]), it would be great to re-run the study with participants with cognitive impairments.

I’d just note that my brain is fairly wired-up to how the guidelines work, so I hope people less biased by that can comment as well 😊

Kind regards,

-Alastair

1] Page with video and link to slides:
https://alastairc.uk/tests/wcag21-examples/ntc-research-video.html

NB: If the slides don’t work in your screenreader make sure the accessibility setting is on:
https://support.google.com/docs/answer/6282736


2] Understanding doc:
https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Understanding/non-text-contrast.html


3] COGA doc:
https://w3c.github.io/coga/techniques/index.html#use-clear-visual-affordances


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www.nomensa.com<http://www.nomensa.com/> / @alastc