Page text default grey-ish not black

[ericwerth]

I am hoping that someone can give me some insight into why text on pages by default is grey and not black (see below).  Reading within the Community it sounds like the default text color can't be changed at the course level but may be changed administratively for the entire institution.  Looking at my administrative dashboard, it appears as though our theme is set to "basic branding".

The color scheme overall fits our institution well, but there is not as much contrast between the white background and text as I would like, and it is easy to forget when creating content to change the color from default to black.

Maybe this is the result of some other setting, but would appreciate any suggestions!  I have tried in both Chrome and Firefox with the same results.

[tdelillo · Accepted solution]

I would agree with you that this is due to the Theme settings. If you have permissions to adjust it, can you just change the Main Text Color to black? The https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-10891-4214418311 goes into some detail about all the settings you can change. [Side note: Definitely use your beta account to play around with these settings until you decide what you like ]

[ericwerth]

Awesome, thanks  @tdelillo !  I do have permissions to adjust the theme settings and will look over the information you linked to here.   Appreciate the help!

[ericwerth]

I thought that I would update anyone who may read this thread that I was able to go into our beta account and change the default text color to black, which accomplishes what I had hoped.  I spoke to a few power users at our institution and asked them if they noticed the text was a bit grey.  They indicated they had not noticed specifically, but could tell the difference when I had two text samples, one black and the other the default, next to one another.  No one seemed to believe that anyone would have an issue changing the default to true black, so we will likely do this just after final grades are submitted this term.  Thanks again  @tdelillo  ‌for the earlier reply!

[dee_kerwickchri]

Surely text is dark grey as this reduces contrast to a level acceptable to ensure  web guidelines on accessibility and screen readability are met? 

[ericwerth]

Your post made me think about this  @dee_kerwickchri ‌.  I certainly don't want to change something that may have a reason I haven't thought of!

I visited the site WebAIM: Color Contrast Checker to see if there is something related to contrast I hadn't considered.  According to the site, the default color (#2D3B45) has a contrast ratio of 11.52:1 (WebAIM: Color Contrast Checker) while black (#000000) has a contrast ratio of 21:1 (WebAIM: Color Contrast Checker).  The site also indicates that WCAG 2.0 level AA standards require a normal text contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 while level AAA a contrast ratio of 7:1.  The default seems well within the standards, so maybe I just prefer level AAAAAA standards!