pkasting@, what is the font size on the omnibox on Android (and other platforms)?  The documentation I found internally said a contrast ratio of 3:1 is okay if the font size is 18 or higher.

CC lgarron@ for an opinion (or stronger statement of policy)

No idea, but I thought we were trying to push more broadly for 4.5:1 regardless of size elsewhere.

> No idea, but I thought we were trying to push more broadly for 4.5:1 regardless of size elsewhere.

I keep asking about contrast guidelines and hearing different things.

lpalmaro@, is there an policy or documentation on an effort like this?

This seems like a specific instance of #618334 - the resolution there was to use #757575 on white, which is 4.5.

Regardless of the actual font size here, the intent of the different values for contrast ratios is that large or bold font has heavier lines and is thus easier to perceive at lower contrast ratios. I don't think the omnibox could ever be described as "large" (like a heading), so I don't think the 3.0 ratio could ever apply.

Wrong bug number (somehow I copied the number of this bug?) - should have been 397260

Laura is out for a couple of weeks.

Where have you heard anything different?

The contrast ratios of 4.5 : 1 for main text and 3 : 1 for headings comes from WCAG: https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG/#visual-audio-contrast

It's also part of the Material Design standard:
https://material.io/guidelines/usability/accessibility.html#accessibility-color-contrast

We've adopted that as a minimum standard for Chrome too. We've occasionally allowed some wiggle room for text that's disabled or less important, but the Omnibox is extremely important for users to be able to read clearly, so we really don't want to compromise there.

Okay, thanks for the statements about how things should be.  I'm going to broaden this bug, which was originally Android-only, to all platforms, as the hint text shading seems similar to me on all them.

This issue has been Available for over a year. If it's no longer important or seems unlikely to be fixed, please consider closing it out. If it is important, please re-triage the issue.

Sorry for the inconvenience if the bug really should have been left as Available.

For more details visit https://www.chromium.org/issue-tracking/autotriage - Your friendly Sheriffbot

I can reproduce this on Windows as well

Google Chrome	70.0.3514.0 (Official Build) dev (64-bit) (cohort: Dev)
Windows 10

Contrast radio of hint text:
Foreground:#80868B
Background:#F1F3F4

The contrast ratio is: 3.3:1

Note: on any OS, to trigger this UI in the Omnibox - open the NTP and use your mouse to put focus into the "fake" search box. It changes to show the hint text in the Omnibox.

Also applies to Chrome OS
Google Chrome	70.0.3511.0 (Official Build) canary (64-bit)
Firmware Version Google_Eve.9584.160.0	

Foreground:#7F858A
Background:#F1F3F4

The contrast ratio is: 3.4:1

Deleted: hint text.png 14.8 KB

	hint text.png 14.8 KB View Download

Bug 618334 is for Omnibox hint text low contrast (gray on gray)
 Bug 870549  is for Omnibox autocomplete text low contrast (white on blue)

bklmn: Can you advise on a higher-contrast pair of colors here (for the "Search Google or type a URL" hint-text state.

I'm guessing we don't want to change the background color in this state since we already adjusted that to improve its contrast with the rest of the toolbar. Perhaps we could just make the hint text darker?

We updated the hint colors on Clank for Chrome Modern. We should check whether the contrast ratio meets min contrast ratios now. 

+hannahs@ - are you able to do this?

The normal omnibox on Android uses #DADCE0 hint text on #F1F3F4, which is a contrast ratio of 5.43. In incognito we use 70% white alpha on #3C4043, which is a contrast ratio of 6.09.

Both of these exceed minimum contrast ratios, so removing OS=Android label.