Apple iMessage Green bubbles fail accessibility WCAG colour contrast

Chris Yoong
Apr 1, 2024

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A text to Mum asks about lasagne recipes, and it appears in a green bubble because it was sent via SMS or MMS messaging.

So apparently in the US, users care about blue bubbles and green bubbles within iMessage.

While that “conversation” happens, what was highlighted was these green bubbles don’t even pass colour contrast checks, meaning they’re not as accessible as they could be.

For those uninitiated, accessibility is about building digital products that are inclusive of disabled users. These internation technical standards are called WCAG. Part of this technical specification includes Contrast (Minimum) (Level AA) under 1.4.3

I’m not sure why this has been missed, or what prevents darkening the green to pass simple colour contrast checks…

Colour contrast analyser showing that #35C759 background with #FFFFFF forground does not pass WCAG 2.2 AA colour contrast checks.

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