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Enhancing User Experience with the prefers-contrast Media Feature
The evolution of CSS continues to provide developers with innovative ways to cater to user preferences. One such feature is the prefers-contrast media feature, which detects a user’s contrast settings and allows websites to adapt accordingly. In this article, we’ll delve into the world of prefers-contrast, exploring its capabilities, limitations, and potential applications.
What is prefers-contrast?
A media feature is a type of media query that checks a device’s specific characteristics and settings. The prefers-contrast media feature helps detect if a user’s operating system has a specific contrast setting that should be reflected on the browser. This media query has four values: no-preference, more, less, and custom.
Rendering Different Contrast Settings
Let’s create a button with a focus style and add different styles based on the user’s contrast preferences. For a higher contrast setting, we’ll change the background color to a darker purple and increase the font weight. For a lower contrast setting, we’ll change the background to a lighter shade of purple, choose a lighter font weight, and change the outline style to dashed.
Maximum Contrast Guidelines
While WCAG 2.0 provides minimum contrast requirements, it doesn’t offer guidance on maximum contrast. However, we can use a rule of thumb from the A11y Slack Community, which suggests a maximum contrast ratio of 10:1. This guideline is not definitive, but it gives us a good starting point for thinking about maximum contrast.
Considerations for Using prefers-contrast
The prefers-contrast media feature is useful for implementing high- and low-contrast options, but its implementation is still relatively recent. Browser support is limited, and operating systems handle contrast settings differently. We need to consider these factors when adding prefers-contrast to our projects.
Using JavaScript to Create a Contrast Theme Selector
Let’s create a contrast theme selector that respects user settings, even if their browser or operating system doesn’t support prefers-contrast. We’ll use JavaScript to enhance the user experience and ensure that any changes we make don’t affect Windows high-contrast mode.
Defining Contrast Themes
We’ll define three contrast themes: default, high-contrast, and low-contrast. Each theme will have a unique set of colors and font weights. We’ll use the EightShapes Contrast Grid to ensure our color combinations meet the minimum and maximum contrast requirements.
Creating a Radio Group
We’ll create a radio group to allow users to select their preferred contrast theme. We’ll use JavaScript to store the user’s selection and update the website accordingly.
Handling Theme Changes with JavaScript
We’ll add an event listener to the radio group to detect changes in the user’s selection. When the user selects a new theme, we’ll update the website’s styles accordingly.
Using localStorage to Remember User Preferences
We’ll use localStorage to remember the user’s selected theme. When the user returns to the website, we’ll check if there’s a stored value and apply the corresponding theme.
Conclusion
The prefers-contrast media feature has the potential to greatly enhance user experience, especially for users with disabilities. By combining prefers-contrast with JavaScript, we can create websites that adapt to individual user needs. However, it’s essential to test these approaches with real users and gather feedback to ensure we’re providing a good user experience.