Completion target
A versioned website color/token package whose exact roles, states, themes, alternatives, test evidence, consumer mapping, open failures and acceptance scope are traceable.
Website Color System Decision Record
Coordinate one website color system through content, people, component states, current accessibility requirements, bounded color/token scenarios, implementation tests, and named acceptance.
Before you begin
- • Current product, brand, content, component-library and release records available
- • Urgent inaccessible critical-state or misleading safety/status communication routed to responsible owners
Risks to control
- • Color preferences or brand rules can conflict with reading, low vision, color perception, forced colors, display, cognitive and environmental needs.
- • A color system can expose or encode user/health/status information when semantics and data boundaries are unclear.
- • Contrast depends on the actual rendered foreground/background, size/weight, state, alpha, image/gradient and antialiasing context.
- • Automated contrast and color-blindness tools cannot evaluate all accessibility, meaning, focus, cognition or usability conditions.
Choose your path
Built around the job you need to finish
Carry one website color system from current content, components, states, user preferences and token requirements through bounded generation, implementation, representative evaluation, versioning, rollback and named acceptance.
Product designer or token owner
Define semantic color roles and aliases that remain understandable across themes and component states.
Inventory real roles and content, use the connected Tools as bounded transformations, author typed tokens and document every unresolved or exceptional use.
Produces a versioned semantic system rather than an arbitrary palette or fixed shade-count recipe.
Frontend engineer or component maintainer
Implement tokens faithfully across real components, states and browser preference modes without silent hard-coded drift.
Resolve aliases and fallbacks, map tokens to components, test forced colors and failure states, and retain implementation/version evidence.
Can reproduce the exact implementation and rollback without claiming generated CSS is automatically complete or production-ready.
Low-vision, color-vision or preference-affected user and reviewer
Read, distinguish and operate content and controls without color-only cues or blocked user settings.
Exercise representative text, icons, charts, errors, focus and disabled/selected states under zoom, forced colors and relevant assistive settings.
Can accept or report exact failures with content/state evidence and an owner, not a blanket accessibility pass.
Authoritative checks for this workflow
Outputs and checklists are planning aids. Review the linked current authorities and the records, terms, instructions, and requirements that apply to your exact situation before a consequential decision.
- Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.2World Wide Web Consortium · Current color-use, contrast, non-text contrast, focus, motion and state criteria for representative content and interaction rather than a palette-only pass.
- Selecting Web Accessibility Evaluation ToolsW3C Web Accessibility Initiative · Current guidance that tools support but do not replace knowledgeable evaluation, human judgment, assistive-technology review and affected-user testing.
- Design Tokens Format Module 2025.10W3C Design Tokens Community Group · Current typed token, alias, inheritance, resolution and error semantics for versioned, machine-readable color-system records.
- Design Tokens Color Module 2025.10W3C Design Tokens Community Group · Current color-value, color-space, component, alpha and fallback semantics; generated CSS snippets do not prove full token validity or implementation fidelity.
- CSS Color Module Level 4World Wide Web Consortium · Current CSS color notation, interpolation, color-space and serialization context for implementation evidence and browser support review.
- CSS Color Adjustment Module Level 1World Wide Web Consortium · Current forced-colors, color-scheme and user-agent adjustment context supporting representative high-contrast and user-preference tests.