Text that doesn’t contrast sufficiently against its background is difficult or impossible to read for visitors with low vision, colour blindness, or simply anyone using their phone in bright sunlight — and WCAG sets a specific, measurable contrast ratio that most sites fail somewhere without realising it, often in a brand colour that looks fine to whoever chose it.
Check a specific colour pairing yourself before ordering
Use a free contrast checker tool (search “WebAIM contrast checker”) and enter your text and background colours. It gives you the exact ratio and whether it passes WCAG AA — useful for confirming a specific suspected problem before a full remediation pass.
Colour contrast remediation
Colour combinations that fail WCAG contrast, corrected while staying close to your brand palette.
- Full backup taken before we start
- If we can’t fix it, you get your money back
- We never ask for your own password
This or something else?
| Specific text and background colour combinations fail WCAG contrast requirements | This fix covers it |
| You want a full accessibility audit first, not contrast specifically | Accessibility audit report – WCAG 2.2 AA |
| The contrast issue is specifically in focus indicators, not body text or buttons | Focus visible & outline restoration, a related but more specific fix |
| You’re not sure which colour combinations on your site actually fail | We identify this systematically as the first step of this fix |
What you are seeing
- Text that’s difficult to read against its background, especially in bright light or for visitors with low vision
- A contrast checker tool confirming a specific pairing fails WCAG AA
- The issue possibly concentrated in a specific brand colour used across buttons or headings
- Automated scans flagging multiple contrast failures across the site
Common causes
- A brand colour palette chosen for visual appeal without checking contrast ratios
- Light grey text on white backgrounds, a common but frequently failing design choice
- Coloured text on a coloured (not white) background, compounding the contrast problem
- Placeholder text in form fields styled too lightly to meet contrast requirements
- A hover or focus state changing text colour to something that also fails contrast, even though the default state passes
What we do
- Scan the site systematically for failing colour combinations
- Identify every instance and its specific contrast ratio versus what’s required
- Adjust colours to meet WCAG AA contrast requirements while staying as close to your brand palette as possible
- Verify each corrected combination passes using a contrast checker
- Confirm the visual change is minimal and still recognisably on-brand
- Check across a representative sample of affected page types
What is included
- Failing colour combinations identified and corrected to meet WCAG AA
- Verified passing contrast ratios using a checker tool
- Colours kept as close to your original brand palette as the requirement allows
- The pre-fix backup, kept for 30 days
Not included
- A full brand colour palette redesign, if that’s genuinely needed beyond contrast compliance
- Broader accessibility issues unrelated to colour contrast, a separate, related fix
- Meeting WCAG AAA (a stricter standard), unless specifically requested instead of AA
- Ongoing monitoring as new brand colours are introduced
Questions about this fix
Will fixing contrast issues change how my site looks significantly?
Generally not significantly — we adjust colours by the minimum amount needed to pass, aiming to stay recognisably on-brand rather than imposing a different colour scheme.
Why would my brand colours fail contrast if they look fine to me?
Contrast that looks acceptable to someone with typical vision, viewing on a good monitor, can still fail the measurable ratio WCAG requires, and can be genuinely difficult for visitors with low vision or colour blindness even when it looks fine to others.
Does this affect my logo too?
Logos are generally treated differently from body text and UI elements under WCAG, so we'd focus on text and interactive element contrast rather than requiring a logo redesign.
Is WCAG AA enough, or should I aim for AAA?
AA is the standard most legislation and legal complaints reference, making it the practical target for most sites; AAA is stricter and generally reserved for specific contexts where it's explicitly required.
Will this fix catch every contrast issue, including ones in images with text?
This addresses text and UI element contrast in your actual page code; text embedded within an image is a different kind of accessibility concern, worth flagging separately if that applies to your site.
Related fixes
If this is the second time this year
A bad update breaking the site is a symptom of updates not being tested first. Care plans run every update on a staging clone before it reaches your live site, which is the actual fix for this happening again.
Your access, your rules
Create a separate admin account for us and delete it when we are done. For anything else, we get in touch and agree a method — never a form field on this site, never by reply to an email.
We back up first, always
Before anything is touched we take a full backup and keep it for 30 days. If a fix goes wrong, we put the site back exactly as it was.
If it is not what you bought
If the problem turns out smaller than what you ordered, we refund the difference. If it is bigger, we stop and send a quote before doing any extra work.
If we cannot fix it
You get back what we received. Diagnosis is on us — you only pay when the problem is actually solved. The payment processor takes its fee before the money reaches us, so we never hold it and it is not ours to return. That is true here as everywhere else.
If it comes back
Reply within seven days of delivery and we put it back on the bench at no cost. The fix is not finished until it holds.
What we are responsible for
If something goes wrong with a fix, our responsibility is limited to what you paid for it. We take a full backup first so mistakes can be undone, and we tell you before doing anything outside what you bought.