Script of the Month: Color Contrast Validator

Contrast is such a key topic in the realm of accessibility that it’s mentioned in three of the articles in Issue #149 of InDesign Magazine. The various tools and services for checking contrast cited in those articles have one thing in common: They all take you out of InDesign. And, most of them involve a significant amount of manual work to check specific color combinations.

The month’s Script of the Month offers the double benefit of allowing you to check the contrast of many color combinations against the WCAG 2.1 standards in an automated fashion without ever leaving InDesign.

To get the script, head to accessibilityscripts.com.
Use the coupon code ccv_idsom (valid through July 31, 2022) during the checkout process to download the script for free.

When you run the script, you can choose whether to compare two swatches or all swatches in your document. 

If you compare two swatches, you can see which tints pass the validation test. If you compare all swatches, you can see the contrast values for every possible combination of foreground and background colors.