Research Guides: Web Accessibility: Color & Contrast

Color & Contrast Checkers

If you need help figuring out what the hex code or RGB value of a color is in your browser, check out the Colorzilla browser extension. It will add an eyedropper to your browser that you can use to hover over a color and click to copy its hex code to your clipboard.

Colour Contrast Analyzer (CCA)
Free desktop app for both Windows and Mac. Use the color picker to sample colors from anywhere on your desktop and check contrast.
WebAim Contrast Checker
Enter colors for text and background color to check for accessible contrast. Can also check link contrast.
Tanaguru contrast finder
Similar to WebAim, but provides more color suggestions that will meet requirements

Color Blindess Simulators

RGBlind
Evaluates a URL for the most common types of color blindness. It also has a browser extension.
Toptal Colorblind Web Page Filter
Enter a URL of a webpage to see how the page looks to different types of colorblindness.

Need better color options?

The following tools let you build accessible color palettes without having to guess at hex codes:

Accessible color palette builder
Create a palette of up to 6 colors and generate accessible combinations of those colors.
Adobe Color
Displays a selection of colors as an individual with colorblindness would see them. Can also check contrast
Color Safe
Lets you select your font size and background color, and then choose an accessible color from seven different color families
Randoma11y
Explore different accessible color combinations. Select from the list of predefined colors, and then use the "New colors" button to generate variations.