Styles for Checking Color Reliance
There are two primary accessibility issues that can be introduced by using color in web pages. First, you must ensure that there is sufficient contrast between foreground and background colors. Second, you must ensure that color is not the only means of conveying content or information.
Poor color contrast can affect everyone with vision, but has a particular impact on users with low vision. There are many tools to check for color contrast issues, such as WebAIM’s Color Contrast Checker.
Relying on color to convey content will impact blind users (page colors are not identified by screen readers), users with low vision who may override page colors, and users with color vision deficiency (or color blindness) who may have difficulty differentiating between certain colors. Checking for color reliance can be difficult and cannot easily be automated. Removing color information from the page so that it appears in grayscale allows an evaluator to more easily identify content that relies on color. We have long suggested that printing the page on a black and white printer is a good, though not particularly environmentally friendly, way to detect color [...]