Ensure your designs are accessible. Check contrast ratios between text and background colors to meet WCAG 2.1 standards.
Web accessibility is about ensuring that everyone, including people with visual impairments, can access and understand your digital content. The WCAG Color Contrast Checker is an essential tool for designers and developers to verify that their text is readable against its background. Poor contrast can make content invisible to users with color blindness, low vision, or even those using screens in bright environments.
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) define specific contrast ratios to ensure text is legible. Our tool tests against two levels of compliance:
Using our tool is simple. Enter the Hex code for your text (foreground) and background colors. The calculator instantly computes the relative luminance and provides a ratio. You can use the color picker to adjust shades in real-time until you hit your target ratio.
Just as our Meta Tag Generator helps you optimize for search engines, this contrast checker helps you optimize for human readers.
Level AA is the mid-range standard (4.5:1 ratio) and is the most common requirement for web accessibility laws. Level AAA is the highest standard (7:1 ratio) and is recommended for specialized sites or to provide the best possible experience for users with significant vision loss.
While it doesn't simulate color blindness, the WCAG contrast ratios are specifically designed to ensure that text is readable regardless of how a person perceives color. By meeting the 4.5:1 ratio, you are effectively making your site accessible to most people with color vision deficiencies.
According to WCAG, large text is defined as 18pt (approx. 24px) or larger, or 14pt (approx. 18.67px) bold or larger. These sizes allow for a slightly lower contrast ratio (3:1 for AA) because the increased stroke width makes the letters easier to distinguish.