Improve contrast and color range for individuals with visual impairments

[SebCanet]

Expected Behavior

choose colors/fonts for kids with vision/colors difficulties or disabilities

Actual Behavior

nothing can be changed

Steps to Reproduce

euh....

Operating System and Browser

everything

[mrjacobbloom]

Potentially ties into LLK/scratch-blocks#1032 (and LLK/scratch-blocks#995)

[marycps]

We LOVE Scratch.

However, Scratch 3.0 version has poor contrast between the block background colors and the white Text. Can you please revert the block colors to the previous colors or at least the darken the new block colors?

If you use WebAim's color contrast checker at https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker to check the contrast level between the mustard yellow Events blocks with the white text, for instance, they fail the Level AA and Level AAA Accessibility checks.

Thanks so much.

[hedgehog125]

Maybe an alternative could be some accessibility settings like a high contrast option?

[SebCanet]

Can we test with tools like WAVE http://wave.webaim.org/ ? With a colleague we tried different things we think essential for kids:

• switch to black & white / colored version
• change font
• pick color and apply it on a block category
• use keyboard only: select block, pick it, drag and drop with keyboard arrows, contextual menu, etc

Some of these ideas are functionnal, some we decided not to change Blockly core to add it. https://gitlab.univ-nantes.fr/declercq-c/AccessiBlock https://github.com/technologiescollege/Blockly-at-rduino

[ragesoss]

I tried out Scratch 3 for the first time today — I'd only used Scratch 1.4 before — and the low color contrast struck me right away as a big regression.

The text is really hard to read (for any user, not just users with visual impairment).

I used the WebAIM constrast checker and found that the color for 'Control' blocks against white text have a 1.89:1 contrast ratio, and 'Events' blocks have a 1.65:1 constrast ratio. The recommended minumum is 4.5:1.

[chrisgarrity]

Additional feedback about contrast from a Czech educator (and Scratch translator)

Contrary to Scratch 2.0, the code of Scratch 3.0 is much less visible when projecting in the classroom. Comparing text size to the height of a block, there is a lot of unused space. Scripts shown on a wall or whiteboard must be much more higher than in older version or the letters of code must be smaller. Not big contrast of the text to block fill (thin white letters in light colored box) is difficult to read. Classrooms must be darken much more than before.

When pupils can see the same blocks on the screen as on the wall it is quite good but when presenting settings of tasks it is really badly visible. My teachers say that it is a step backwards from Scratch 2.0. I think i tis a serious problem.

So I ask you whether does Scratch team intend to allow text font changes/settings in blocks (bold, bigger...). We have made some experiments with setting of the font in web page containing Scratch3.0 code and it seems that there are some possibilities how to improve readability of it.