Font color & contrast ratio issues within IK Rig editor

intrepidcreative
Wed, 26 Oct 2022 17:19:20 +0000
Character & Animation

The issue is the legibility of the text within the Hierarchy panel on the IK Rig editor; the list of bones. It’s an issue of contrast ratio. Is there any way to boost the contrast ratio of the text within this panel?

The light grey against black is quite hard to read, made worse by the small font size.
Select one of the bones and the text becomes totally illegible against the (default) blue highlight.

UE GUI in general is a rather small font size, but throughout (mostly) the contrast ratio is solid: the text is much lighter.

In the US, while there are (yet) no formal ADA accessibility guidelines for web & software, there are well-established guidelines: WCAG: WCAG 2 Overview | Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) | W3C

w3.org

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 covers a wide range of recommendations for making Web content more accessible. Following these guidelines will make content more accessible to a wider range of people with disabilities, including...

According to W3/WCAG, conformant text the size that Unreal uses should have a minimum contrast ratio of 4.5:1.

Again, almost universally throughout UE GUI, with its white text on dark grey BG, UE easily exceeds this. Ex: 7.65:1 for a selected tab in the Details panel. There are some locations/instances where it dips into non-conformance, such as disabled options within drop-downs & context menus.

The Hierarchy panel however seems to be an outlier; its as if EVERYTHING is disabled.

Default state:
#4b4b4b Text
#1a1a1a Background
Result: 1.99:1

Highlighted:
#3D76AE Text
#0070E0 Background
Result: 1:1

A contrast ratio of 1:1 is essentially the same color to the Contrast Checker:
https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/

Request/Question

Is there any way to modify the text color and/or background color of the Hierarchy panel within the IK Rig editor?

If the recommended solution is to fart around with Editor Preferences > Theme Editor, which of those couple dozen items represents/targets JUST the Hierarchy panel?

I have tried modifications to all 4 settings under Editor Preferences > General Appearance > Accessibility and none of them have any impact (better or worse) on the Hierarchy panel.

Any assistance is greatly appreciated. I’ve just begun my journey into character animation & retargeting and am almost nearly at full-stop levels of legibility issues.
BUT WITH JUST THIS PANEL!

2 posts - 2 participants