Aespec | Brighton based design, branding, interactive and web design agency » Applications

WCAG 2.0 Contrast tools

admin — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 13:52:59 +0000

One of the challenges of modern web design is ensuring that the colours used are WCAG 2.0 contrast compliant. Although there are sites that automatically check a URL for WCAG 2.0 contrast compliance they’re not really that useful for the design process. Here are a couple of useful tools that we use on our projects.

Colour Contrast Checker

Colour Contrast Checker is a fantastic online tool that allows to specify a foreground and a background colour and determine if they provide enough of a contrast when viewed by someone having color deficits or when viewed on a black and white screen. Though it doesn’t automatically check you’re Photoshop or Fireworks visuals it does give you some fighting chance when having to design WCAG 2.0 contrast compliant sites.

Colour Oracle

Colour Oracle is a free tool that simulates deuteranopia, protanopia and tritanopia. By using a system-wide menu you can quickly simulate what colourblind people see. Also, as this is a system-wide tool it doesn’t matter what application you use for your designs.

Google Chrome

admin — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 11:31:57 +0000

Google has announced the release of their new browser and currently offer a beta version for Windows XP and Vista. Though we are totally Mac based we have been testing it out through the medium of Parallels (essential for testing our sites) and so far have been impressed. Can’t wait for the Mac native version.

Fluid

admin — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 07:07:52 +0000

I came across an incredibly useful piece of software called Fluid (Mac OS X only). In a nutshell Fluid enables you to build your own stand-alone applications based on any website. Cool!

Oxidizer

admin — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 10:42:10 +0000

I stumbled across this rather excellent application for Mac OS X that enables you to generate cosmic images. You can download Oxidizer from here