Color Contrast ADA Compliance for Blackboard Courses

A rising issue in development lately has been ADA compliance and Web Accessibility. In many of my returning courses, I've started to note to professors items that could potentially be compliance issues. One of the most common issues I've come across is use of COLOR in Blackboard courses. Contrary to the popular professor and developer belief, just because Blackboard GIVES you a color doesn't necessarily mean that it is ADA compliant!

For full ADA and Web Accessibility compliance with WCAG 2.0, color contrast in courses must have at least a ratio of 5:1 for level 2 compliance and a ratio of 10:1 for level 3 compliance. I think it should be noted that in our effort to support the highest standard of quality in our courses, we should always strive to use colors that meet level 3 compliance.

With that in mind, I decided to set out to see exactly WHICH of the offered colors in Blackboard were actually compliant and what level of compliance they met.

Here is a summary of the results:

• Total number of colors offered in the blackboard palette: 216
  • Number of colors that meet level 3 compliance:  24
  • Number of colors that only meet level 2 compliance: 43
  • Number of colors that are non-compliant: 149

As you can see, only 11% of the colors are level 3 compliant and about 20% more are level 2 compliant only. But, the majority of colors offered by blackboard (69%) are not compliant. And not many professors know this!

At the request of a professor I've been working with, I've created a resource that can be shared with them. It is just a simple HTML page that can be e-mailed. Its not hosted through any server at the moment. Feel free to take this file and adjust it, change it as needed, and use it as you would like.

File: ADA Color Contrast Page for Blackboard 9.0+