Testing and test settings

There’s two main ways to perform WCAG 2 and APCA testing in Pinwheel. You can use the on-the-fly testing in the inspector panel, or you can use the test sheet for automated exporting.

Pinwheel’s testing system can be used to configure what gets tested, and how. The key points are:

• Each colour, colour set, colour alias, or group can be assigned to a test group.
• Each test group can have test tasks.
• Each task does one thing (APCA contrast testing etc).

Why set it up this way? It means all the settings are in a central place. If you want to change the test options, you just need to edit one test task. If you want to add a new test type, you just need to add a test task.

Pinwheel’s automated testing is set up in the test sheet, which can be opened via Files › Test Settings. Once set up, choosing File › Test All will run the tests and present the results.

What are WCAG 2 and APCA? #

When we use “WCAG 2” and “APCA” in Pinwheel and Pinwheel’s help, we’re referring to color contrast testing. More specifically, the methods outlined as part of the WCAG 2 guidelines, and their likely successor for color contrast testing, APCA. They are both intended to be tools to help make interfaces and content more accessible.

There can also be legal or contractual obligations to ensure certain contrast thresholds are met. The European Accessibility Act (EAA) is one example of that.

Opacity #

When testing colors that are not fully opaque, Pinwheel blends foreground colors into the background color, based on the foreground color’s opacity. This matches the recommendation for APCA testing. The opacity for background colors is ignored.