Level A · WCAG 2.0
1.4.1 Use of Color
Colour alone cannot carry information, mark a state, or tell the user to do something.
Manual only No automated check says anything useful.
How it fails in practice
Links inside a paragraph shown only by being blue. A status column where green means shipped and red means failed, with no other difference.
How to fix it
Add a second signal: an underline, an icon, a word. The colour stays — it just stops being load-bearing.
At a glance
- Level
- Level A — the minimum. Failing one of these usually makes something impossible rather than merely hard.
- Principle
- Perceivable
- Guideline
- 1.4 Distinguishable
- Added in
- WCAG 2.0
- EN 301 549
- 9.1.4.1
- Automated check
- Manual only
Manual only
How far an automated check gets
Nothing automatic decides this. A scanner that reports it as passing is reporting that it did not look. It stays untested until a person tests it and records what they did — which is exactly how we treat it: as untested, not as passed.
Related criteria
Other criteria under the same guideline.
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