Color Contrast for Beginners: How to Make Your Website Readable for Everyone

Originally published at AccessibleWeb Guide . You have probably squinted at a website before -- light gray text on a white background, or red text on a dark blue banner. You might have thought, "That is hard to read," and moved on. But for millions of people with low vision, color blindness, or aging eyes, "hard to read" means "impossible to use." Color contrast is one of the most common accessibility problems on the web, and one of the easiest to fix. You do not need to be a designer or a developer. You just need to understand what makes text readable and have a few free tools in your back pocket. This guide will teach you everything you need to know about color contrast in plain language, with step-by-step instructions for checking and fixing it on your own website. What Is Color Contrast (and Why Does It Matter)? Color contrast is the difference in brightness between your text and the background it sits on. High contrast means the text is easy to read -- think black text on a white