Level AA · WCAG 2.0
1.4.3 Contrast (Minimum)
Text needs a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 against its background — 3:1 for large text, from 18.66px bold or 24px regular.
Automated A failure is reliably detectable.
How it fails in practice
Light grey placeholder text at 2.8:1. White text on a brand colour that passed on the designer’s calibrated monitor and fails on a phone in daylight.
How to fix it
Measure, do not eyeball. Fix it in the design tokens rather than per component, so the next screen inherits the correction instead of repeating the mistake.
At a glance
- Level
- Level AA — the level EN 301 549 requires, and therefore the level the BFSG and the EAA are measured against.
- Principle
- Perceivable
- Guideline
- 1.4 Distinguishable
- Added in
- WCAG 2.0
- EN 301 549
- 9.1.4.3
- Automated check
- Automated
Automated
How far an automated check gets
A tool can decide this one. A failure is a measurable fact, and finding none is real evidence rather than an absence of looking — which makes this one of the few criteria where a clean automated result means something on its own.
Measured, not estimated, on every page we render and in two viewports. This is one of the criteria where a clean pass is real evidence.
Related criteria
Other criteria under the same guideline.
Find out which criteria your site fails
We scan up to 100 pages against WCAG 2.2 AA, run the agent protocol on one key journey and send you the report — free, once, no strings.