Accessibility colour workflow
ACT brings together fast colour selection, live WCAG contrast analysis in real time, opacity-aware testing, and in-depth colour code conversion – all in one focused macOS tool. It is designed for anyone who needs dependable colour decisions for accessible digital design and testing.
Feature overview
The AI engine built into ACT works seamlessly across an elegant interface. The 'virtual' colour of a semi-transparent foreground against any background colour is rendered and the effective contrast calculated. AI also lets you enter colour values in any notation you like – and will even correct your typing mistakes.
Screenshots
The screenshots below show two of ACT's strongest areas of the application: colour selection, with its tint, shade, opacity and brightness workflow, and the colour code conversion tool with its wide notation coverage and permissive input handling. All powered by AI.
The input fields allow you to enter foreground and background colours directly, and previews them for you (including opacity). You can then tweak the colours using the brightness controls.
You can also choose a base colour from the polygon, and inspect lighter and darker variants in 5% steps, or opacity from alpha 1 down to alpha 0.
Clicking the shape for the foreground or background colour loads it in the picker as the new current colour and populates the tints/shades and opacity tables.
The current foreground and background colours are automatically loaded into the colour conversion tool. This displays six different notion systems for each colour: hex, hex8, RGB, RGBA, HSL and HSV. A preview of each colour is also displayed in live swatches.
You can also test a colour by entering a value directly, before sending it to the foreground or background.
ACT's AI engine corrects your typing mistakes, including missing punctuation, omitted hash symbols, mixed spacing, percentages, named colours and hex8 values.
Feature detail
ACT brings together a focused set of tools for analysing, selecting and converting colours, with accessibility checks built directly into the workflow.
The main controls let you enter foreground and background colours directly, then lighten or darken each one in 5% steps. Two live preview panels show the current foreground and background selections, including transparency, and a switch control swaps the colours instantly.
ACT is very forgiving about the way you enter colour values. It supports a wide range of colour notations, but also tolerates loosely-typed values that would otherwise fail in other apps. For example, you could enter:
You can enter your chosen colours in the foreground/background fields directly – it will even work if you make a typing error. Or you can use the familiar polygon picker to make a quick selection and then pick tints (mixed with white) or shades (mixed with black). Once ready, apply the result to the foreground or background using a single click.
Opacity, or alpha, is a first-class part of the ACT workflow. Semi-transparent foreground colours often trip up designers because they yield effective colours, depending on the backgrounds in use. ACT's unique AI engine takes this into account when displaying colours and calculating values for WCAG contrast analysis.
ACT measures the foreground-to-background contrast ratio and reports the outcome against WCAG criteria in real time. When a semi-transparent foreground is in use, ACT works with the effective composited colour so that the result reflects the real visual outcome. This is unique – it displays the virtual colour whenever opacity is used.
The conversion tools make ACT useful beyond contrast checking alone. Use the colour conversion tool to convert between notations and to test a separate candidate colours. And since font size has a bearing on accessibility, there is also a tool to convert between font units (px, em and percentage values) for scalable, accessible type sizing.
Download
Download the current ACT installer and start working with colour combinations, opacity, notation conversion and WCAG contrast analysis in one place. Best of all, it's FREE.
Accessibility specialists, designers, developers, content professionals and anyone who needs to validate colour choices against accessibility requirements.
Requires macOS 15.0 Sequoia or later.
Support: colin@rocketsalad.com.
