Review Colors for Accessibility in Context
What is Color Review?
Color Review is an advanced interactive tool designed to help creators find and refine accessible colors. Unlike traditional contrast checkers that output simple pass/fail numbers, Color Review provides a visual interface for exploring color relationships. It helps you understand the balance between foreground and background luminance and allows you to "stress test" your palette against various forms of color blindness, ensuring your digital products are beautiful and usable for everyone.
Advanced Color Accessibility Features
Go beyond simple ratios. Our tool provides a holistic view of how your colors function in the real world.
See your colors applied to real UI elements like headlines, body text, and borders instantly.
Instantly switch between 4 different vision simulation modes to identify potential confusion points in your palette.
Adjust colors using visual curves to find the perfect balance between vibrant aesthetics and strict accessibility.
Understand exactly how bright or dark a color is perceived by the human eye compared to others.
Explore safe boundaries for your brand colors to ensure they remain accessible across different usage scenarios.
One-click to copy valid color codes to your clipboard for use in CSS, Sass, or design tools.
How To Review Your Colors
Use our interactive playground to audit and refine your color choices.
Choose a text or icon color using the color picker or by entering a code.
Select a background color. Watch how the interface immediately updates to show this pairing.
Look at the large preview text and the smaller UI examples to judge readability subjectively.
Review the contrast ratio number and the WCAG rating (AA/AAA) displayed on the screen.
Toggle the "View" options to see how the combination looks to users with color blindness.
Drag the color markers in the graph to find a nearby shade that passes accessibility standards if your current one fails.
Tips for Accessible Color Palettes
Creating inclusive color schemes is an art. Here is how to master it.
High-end screens make subtle colors look distinct. Always trust the math (contrast ratio) over your eyes.
When designing charts, use patterns or textures in addition to color to distinguish data points for color-blind users.
Saturated colors can "vibrate" on dark backgrounds. Desaturate your colors slightly for dark mode themes to improve eye comfort.
If placing text over images, ensure the image has a dark overlay or the text has a drop shadow to maintain contrast.
Ensure your Success (Green) and Error (Red) states are distinguishable not just by hue, but also by icon or text label.
Fewer colors are easier to manage for accessibility. Start with a small, robust core palette before expanding.
Essential for Inclusive Design
Color Review is versatile enough for solo freelancers and large enterprise teams alike.
Ensure new brand colors are robust enough to be used legibly in marketing materials and digital products.
Define "safe" color ramps and token pairs (e.g., `text-primary` on `bg-surface`) that are guaranteed to be accessible.
Create chart and graph palettes where every data series is distinguishable from the others and the background.
Test button states (hover, active, disabled) to ensure they maintain sufficient contrast.
Quickly demonstrate to stakeholders why a certain color combination needs to be changed for compliance.
Great for teaching students or junior designers about the relationship between color, luminance, and contrast.
The Color Review Advantage
Why use a dedicated color review tool instead of a simple plugin?
The tool maps color relationships spatially, helping you understand *why* a color fails, not just *that* it fails.
Seeing your design through color-blind simulations builds empathy and understanding for diverse user needs.
Find accessible colors that still look vibrant and modern, rather than just defaulting to boring high-contrast pairs.
Rapidly iterate on color ideas without switching back and forth between design software and documentation.
Confidently ship products knowing your color choices meet legal and ethical accessibility standards.
Considers text size, weight, and background context together, mirroring how users actually experience content.
Technical Specifications
The science behind the Color Review tool.
Custom WebGL/Canvas rendering for smooth, real-time color space visualization and modification.
Uses scientifically accurate matrix transformations to simulate Protanopia, Deuteranopia, and Tritanopia.
Supports HSL (Hue, Saturation, Lightness), RGB, and Hex color models with real-time conversion.
Compliance validation against W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 and 2.1.
100% Client-side operation. No analytics tracking or data storage of your created palettes.
Based on open web standards and color theory principles for inclusive interface design.
Frequently Asked Questions
Have questions? We have answers.