From eb8a0d30da0cc150e95d44bad998c13ee2defc25 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Christian Cleberg Date: Mon, 20 Jul 2026 18:16:01 -0500 Subject: feat(a11y): semantic colour system (#21 phase 1) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Replaces every hard-coded colour with semantic asset colours that adapt to light, dark, and Increase Contrast. Dark mode stays locked, so this is a pure refactor: the audit reports the same findings before and after. The accent is now blue rather than cyan, per the tech/DNS theme. Why custom values rather than the system palette: every system colour fails WCAG AA in light mode. Measured on white — systemYellow 1.51:1, systemOrange 2.20:1, systemGreen 2.22:1, systemCyan 2.54:1, systemRed 3.55:1. All of them pass in dark mode, which is why the dark-locked app looked fine, and why unlocking light mode was never a matter of deleting .preferredColorScheme(.dark). Every new value clears 4.5:1 as text on its page, its card, and its own 16% badge tint — the way AppStatusBadgeView actually draws it. The accent needed splitting in two. As text on a dark background it must be light; as a fill behind a white label it must be dark. #4DA3FF reads 8.00:1 as text on black but 2.63:1 behind white text, so StatusInfo / AccentColor cover the foreground role and AccentFill covers .borderedProminent. AppOnAccent is the label colour for a solid fill and flips by scheme. Colours live in Shared/Colors.xcassets rather than the app catalog: the Shared folder is already a synchronized group in all three targets, so the widget and share extension pick the palette up with no project-file surgery. AccentColor stays in the app catalog as the global tint — and is now actually defined, having been an empty colorset that silently left system controls rendering in stock blue while custom chrome used cyan. Two deliberate visual changes: orange folds into StatusWarning and pink into StatusCritical. They encoded the same severity as the colours they now share, and both sites also carry a text label. Audit findings drop 15 to 14, and one of the originals turned out to be a phantom: the Inspect contrast failure was the Run button in its disabled state, which WCAG 1.4.3 exempts. testInspectScreen now types a domain first so the audit measures an enabled control. Findings also carry the offending element now, so the remaining clipped-text items name themselves ("No Portfolio Yet", "Search domains") instead of being anonymous. --- Docs/ACCESSIBILITY.md | 58 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 58 insertions(+) (limited to 'Docs/ACCESSIBILITY.md') diff --git a/Docs/ACCESSIBILITY.md b/Docs/ACCESSIBILITY.md index 1045df9..128bf3f 100644 --- a/Docs/ACCESSIBILITY.md +++ b/Docs/ACCESSIBILITY.md @@ -6,6 +6,58 @@ large Dynamic Type, element descriptions, trait correctness, and Dynamic Type support — the same ground the accessibility pass tracked in [issue #21](https://github.com/zerolabsco/domain-dig/issues/21) covers. +## The colour palette + +Semantic colours live in `Shared/Colors.xcassets`, which is inside the `Shared` +file-system-synchronized group and therefore reaches the app, the widget, and +the share extension automatically. `AccentColor` stays in +`DomainDig/Assets.xcassets` because it is the system-wide tint resolved via +`ASSETCATALOG_COMPILER_GLOBAL_ACCENT_COLOR_NAME`. + +Use the generated asset symbols — `Color(.statusCritical)`, `Color(.appSurface)` +— never a literal. `ASSETCATALOG_COMPILER_GENERATE_SWIFT_ASSET_SYMBOL_EXTENSIONS` +is on, so these are compile-time checked; a typo will not build. + +Every value clears WCAG AA (4.5:1) as text on its page, on its card, **and on +its own 16% badge tint** — the way `AppStatusBadgeView` actually draws it. The +worst of those three is shown: + +| Role | Light | Dark | Worst light | Worst dark | +| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | +| `StatusInfo` / `AccentColor` | `#0000FF` | `#4DA3FF` | 5.50 | 5.85 | +| `StatusPositive` | `#146C2E` | `#30D158` | 4.65 | 7.32 | +| `StatusWarning` | `#7A5600` | `#FFD60A` | 4.74 | 9.61 | +| `StatusCritical` | `#B3261E` | `#FF6961` | 4.51 | 5.54 | +| `StatusNeutral` | `#5A5A5F` | `#A1A1A6` | 4.92 | 5.88 | + +High Contrast variants push further in the same direction. Surfaces +(`AppBackground`, `AppSurface`, `AppSurfaceElevated`, `AppSeparator`) carry no +meaning, so they get Any/Dark and, where useful, High Contrast — but no status +semantics. + +Why custom values instead of the system palette: **every** system colour fails +in light mode. Measured on white — systemYellow 1.51:1, systemOrange 2.20:1, +systemGreen 2.22:1, systemCyan 2.54:1, systemRed 3.55:1. All of them pass in +dark mode, which is why the dark-locked app looked fine and why unlocking light +mode is impossible without this work. + +### The accent has two roles, and they conflict + +An accent used as **text on a dark background** must be light. The same accent +used as a **fill behind a white label** must be dark. One value cannot do both: +`#4DA3FF` reads at 8.00:1 as text on black, but only 2.63:1 behind white text. + +So there are two colours: + +- `StatusInfo` / `AccentColor` — the accent as *foreground*: text, icons, + bordered-button labels, tab bar. +- `AccentFill` — the accent as a *filled background* behind a label, used by + `.borderedProminent`. Stays dark in both schemes so a white label clears AA + (8.59:1 light, 7.56:1 dark). + +`AppOnAccent` is the label colour for a solid accent fill and flips by scheme — +white on the light accent, black on the dark one. + ## Findings are reported, not enforced The audit surfaces violations that exist today, so failing on all of them would @@ -85,6 +137,12 @@ pre-commit that blocks every commit. A hook routinely bypassed with ## Notes +- **Disabled controls are a false positive.** WCAG 1.4.3 exempts inactive + components from contrast requirements, but the audit flags them anyway. The + Inspect screen's Run button is disabled until a domain is typed, and auditing + the empty state reported a contrast failure that was never a real defect — + which is why `testInspectScreen` types a domain before auditing. Watch for + this before "fixing" a contrast finding on a disabled control. - Audits retry up to three times. Slower machines can miss the audit's internal deadline (`Audit failed to complete in time`, code `-56`), which is a tooling timeout, not an app defect. A screen that still cannot be audited is reported -- cgit v1.2.3