At our April 2024 meeting we were joined by Benjamin Hammel, an Instructional Technology Specialist at Penn State Lehigh Valley. Benjamin provided a demonstration of several techniques that can be used in Photoshop to enhance color contrast when working with charts in Photoshop. The primary purpose of Benjamin’s demo was to show how the color contrast can be improved for low contrast charts when you don’t have access to the data and can’t recreate it. If you work with images in Photoshop, we encourage you to view the April 2024 meeting recording to review the steps Ben takes to improve chart visibility.

For the remainder of the meeting, several group members shared some of their favorite tools that they use to check color contrast when reviewing or creating online content. Matt Farley began with a demo of the Color Contrast Analyzer, a standalone application that is available for Windows and MacOS. This tool can be used to identify the color contrast ratio for colors anywhere on your computer screen. It also gives you the ability to pick and choose new colors, and conveniently lets you know whether or not different color combinations meet various WCAG standards.

Next Aimee Brown-Shadduck showed off the WebAIM Color Contrast checker tool, specifically the bookmarklet. By adding this bookmarklet to your browser, you can use it to check the contrast of colors anywhere on the web. Kerri Weitzel introduced Adobe’s color contrast website, which includes several features like the ability to design a color theme, have colors with good contrasted recommended to you, and view color combinations that are color blind safe. Last but not least, Meltem DiLeo shared the Tanaguru Contrast Finder website, which allows you to check color combinations, set your preferred minimum ratio, and be provided a range of accessible colors.

While wrapping up Sonya Woods provided a brief update on the DOJ ruling regarding accessible web content and mobile apps. This expansion of the ADA will go into effect on June 24, 2024. You can read the full DOJ ruling for more details. Our next meeting will take place on May 23 from 10-11 EST and will feature a panel discussion regarding the use of AI to assist with image description.