RE: Comments on your contrast ratio article

Dear Chris



Thanks for the great feedback. I have now updated the article to include a statement close to the start that all RGB values refer to sRGB ColorSpace.



Thanks for the additional detail on color appearance versus colorimetric models. I'm happy that my original statement on this topic remains appropriate for the audience that my article is intended that. At the moment, I don't think most people realise that the page background colour is relevant, so my main purpose is to highlight that it does make a difference. Dark mode is becoming increasingly popular, so the importance of this topic is increasing.



Regarding the different cones, this is beautifully described by the image below (from http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/vision/colcon.html)



[http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/vision/imgvis/colcon.png]





I have asked the author of this image for permission to use this image in my article, as I think this would be an excellent way of addressing your feedback. If you have rights to any similar image that you can give me permission for, I'd be glad to incorporate it.



My article is aimed at a general audience, so I would prefer to avoid introducing L,M,S cones. I have however changed the text so this it talks about impaired red-sensitive cones, rather than impaired red cones. When combined with an image like the above, I'm happy that my message can be understood by a general audience without being technically incorrect.



On the topic of the contrast formula, I have been trying to find where the formula that WCAG uses to calculate contrast as a ratio came from. I traced the reference from the WCAG guidelines, which led to an ISO standard that includes the formula, but this ISO standard didn't itself give any traceable reference for where it came from. I have not thus far been able to find any traceable empirical or theoretical evidence to support this formula as a predictor of legibility/readability, so if you are aware of any such published evidence, then I would be very grateful if you could point me towards it, and then I can better update my article to reflect where this formula actually came from.



Regarding the power exponents of the luminance formula, APCA appears to use an exponent of 2.2 in its luminance formula, so I'm not quite sure I would agree with your implication that APCA copied the 2.4 exponent.



Regarding my final statement



If these models were to be adapted to specifically consider red-impaired cones, the multiplier in front of the R term would likely be much closer to 0.



I agree that this statement implies that protanopia can be simulated by setting the R channel of an RGB colour to 0, and while I accept this is an over approximation of the matter, I also don't want to overcomplicate the message that I'm trying to get across. I have now slightly updated this statement to



If these models were to be adapted to specifically consider impaired red-sensitive cones, all of the multipliers would likely need to change, and the multiplier in front of the R term would likely be much closer to 0.



Please let me know if you have any further feedback on any of the above, and thank you for the detailed feedback sent so far.



Best wishes



Sam Waller (he, him)

University of Cambridge, Engineering Design Centre

01223 332826



-----Original Message-----

From: Chris Lilley <chris@w3.org<mailto:chris@w3.org>>

Sent: 06 June 2022 00:10

To: Sam Waller <sam.waller@eng.cam.ac.uk<mailto:sam.waller@eng.cam.ac.uk>>

Cc: www-archive@w3.org<mailto:www-archive@w3.org>

Subject: Comments on your contrast ratio article



Hi Dr Waller,



I was reading your interesting article



Does the contrast ratio actually predict the legibility of website text?

  https://www.cedc.tools/article.html <https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cedc.tools%2Farticle.html&data=05%7C01%7Csdw32%40universityofcambridgecloud.onmicrosoft.com%7C524bfaf0ec1e4e11126008da47487626%7C49a50445bdfa4b79ade3547b4f3986e9%7C0%7C0%7C637900673784793945%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=a7Jdvl1W8zf6w%2BeZXmpweYpViR42T9fpYNx3NhUPpBo%3D&reserved=0>



I didn't see any obvious place to provide general feedback, such as a GiHub repo, so am sending some comments that I had via email. Comments on the two exercise I posted to your LinkedIn.





As background, I am a Technical Director at W3C, CSS Working Group staff contact, and co-editor of CSS Color levels 3, 4, and 5. I'm also the W3C liaison to the International Color Consortium (ICC).



I was please to see your clear and succinct summary:



          For dark background colours (RGB<118), both algorithms predict that white text is more legible. For bright background colours (RGB>163), both algorithms predict that black text is more legible. However, for backgrounds with RGB values between 118 and 168, the two algorithms contradict each other. For any background within this range, 'WCAG Contrast Ratio' predicts that black text is more legible, whereas 'APCA Lightness Contrast' predicts that white text is more legible.



Given the voluminous discussion around the use of APCA in WCAG Silver, terse summaries like this are very helpful.



I was also pleased to see the in-browser legibility experiments. These both help validate the model for those with typical color vision, and helps testing for those with atypical color vision.



Your comments on the need to measure reading speed, as well as legibility, were well made and I would also like to see more testing in this area.





On to my specific comments, which I hope you find constructive and helpful:



1) sRGB rather than just "RGB".



From CSS1 until CSS Color 3, all colors in Web content were specified in sRGB, the exception being colors in raster images with embedded ICC profiles. Earlier on, the accuracy in representation of those colors was very variable (websites "designed for Mac" with a different gamma, and so on) but nowadays modern browsers represent such colors consistently, with the notable exception of Firefox in its default configuration.



Since 2016 there has been increasing use of the display-p3 colorspace, both in native content, and Web content in HTML, and now in Canvas as well. This corresponds to widely-available wide gamut screens on laptops, TVs and phones. TV and streaming services are also using the even wider gamut Rec BT.2020 colorspace. CSS Color 4 adds a way to explicitly use these color spaces for specifying, modifying and mixing color.



Thus, it would be helpful had your article referred early on to sRGB and noted that all examples were given in sRGB rather than in some random or unspecified RGB space.



2) Color appearance models vs. colorimetric models



You wrote:



          Additionally, the examples in this article show that black text on coloured backgrounds becomes considerably more legible when the page background becomes black. At the time of writing in March 2022, both 'APCA Lightness Contrast' and 'WCAG Contrast Ratio' were two-colour models that do not account for the effect of the page background, which limits the accuracy of the models.



That is exactly the difference between a colorimetric model (foreground and background colors only) and a color appearance model (which also considers proximal and surround fields, and the overall room illuminance). Color appearance models give better predictions, but require more measurements to characterize the viewing environment and give worse results if those measurements are estimated or incorrect.



While it is certainly valuable to use such models to standardize user testing in a controlled environment, it remains unclear how to integrate a color appearance model into general Web development which would need to take into account the complete web page, plus other windows on the same screen and also the room illuminance and the current adapted white point. Such complexity is beyond the scope of current models such as CIECAM 16.



3) "Color blindness" vs. atypical color vision.



You wrote:



          The eye perceives light using 3 different cones, one of which is most sensitive to red light, another to green light, and another to blue light.



They really don't, and such simplifications are more harmful than helpful. In particular, on hearing that the eye has "RGB sensors" many people readily assign the percentages of R G and B in a color to the amount perceived by each cone, which is totally not the case.





The peak sensitivities of the S, M and L cones are at 445nm (violet), 535nm (green) and 570nm

(green-yellow). Al three cone types are mutations of a single original cone, the S type being characterized by sensitivity dropping off after 450nm in contrast to the 5-600nm peaks of the other two types.



The luminance, red vs. green and blue-violet vs. yellow signals in the retina are formed by addition and subtraction of these signals in the retinal ganglion cells.



          Protanopia occurs when the red-cones are impaired, Deuteranopia occurs when the green-cones are impaired, and Tritanopia occurs when the blue-cones are impaired.



Yes (although L M and S cones), but more commonly we see partial loss of discrimination in one color pair: protanomaly or deuteranomaly giving reduced red-green discrimination rather than a complete lack of red-green discrimination; and tritanomaly giving reduced yellow-blue/violet discrimination.



          Both APCA and WCAG predict the lightness contrast, and ignore the hue contrast completely.



Yes, they do. It isn't clear to what extent ignoring chromatic contrast is a problem though, because chromatic contrast is unlikely to ever fully compensate for inadequate lightness contrast. So thee simplified lightness-only contrast model has a small, variable under-estimation of contrast compared to a full model.



          WCAG uses a Luminance formula that is approximately 0.2R2.4 + 0.7G2.4 + 0.07B2.4.



          APCA uses a Luminance formula that is approximately 0.2R2.2 + 0.7G2.2 + 0.07B2.2



I often see this quoted as "the WCAG formula" which is odd and incorrect. WCAG didn't invent it, although it is where many people first saw these particular coefficients.





The CIE defines luminance, from the CIE standard observer and CIE XYZ linear-light space; luminance is (deliberately chosen to be) the Y component.



The conversion from a given RGB space, such as sRGB, is defined by firstly the Electro-Optical Transfer function ('undoing gamma encoding') to convert to linear light. For sRGB this is defined by the sRGB standard, which (like many other broadcast-derived color space standards) uses a linear portion at very dark levels, to limit noise amplification, followed by a power function for medium-dark to lightest levels.





WCAG 2.0 quoted values from obsolete version of the sRGB standard, with a known error, and then had to cite a specific working draft of sRGB rather than the final standard. However in practice that error was small, and not observable as an error in 8 bit per component encodings; and has been corrected in the latest WCAG 2.x draft (though they have yet to update the references).



Some people approximate this transfer function with a simple power law. The best fit (lowest error) is an overall gamma of 2.223. Other people (and this applies to the APCA algorithm) simply copy the 2.4 exponent value from the full sRGB equation, without considering how the piecewise formula affects it, producing much larger errors. Both approximations under-estimate the relative luminance for dark colors. The 2.4 approximation greatly under estimates it for all colors, being worst in the mid range. It is not clear whether this is a deliberate change or an inadvertent error.





Secondly, a conversion from linear-light RGB to CIE XYZ uses a 3x3 matrix derived from the red, green, blue and white chromaticities. So for sRGB that is again defined by the chromaticities in the sRGB standard, which are in fact the same as those in the ITU Rec. BT.709 standard for HDTV. If we only want Y, this reduces down to the three weights cited. Since the standard does not define the matrix but instead defines the chromaticities, there are small variations in practice due to round-off error or variations in the precision of the white chromaticity.



(Sorry for the big digression on inaccuracies in the APCA luminance calculation, but it is germane to my next point).



          If these models were to be adapted to specifically consider red-impaired cones, the multiplier in front of the R term would likely be much closer to 0.



The spectral response of human cones and of monitor LCDs or OLEDS are very different. Approximating the HVS by simply manipulating sRGB channel values will not produce an accurate model. Instead, rather than the CIE standard 2 degree observer, an alternate observer model should be used to convert spectral values to a modified XYZ space.





--

Chris Lilley

@svgeesus

Technical Director @ W3C

W3C Strategy Team, Core Web Design

W3C Architecture & Technology Team, Core Web & Media