Contrast ratio between active and inactive tabs is 1.32:1

>Contrast ratio [...] is 1.32:1

1.025:1 here (basically the same #525252 vs #505050) using Chrome 61 on a default profile, no themes, see the attachment.

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Tested on Chrome Stable #59.0.3071.115 and Canary #61.0.3150.0 on Windows 10 and able to reproduce the mentioned behavior. Please refer the screenshot for reference.
 
This is a non-regression issue and able to reproduce from M-53. Marking it as untriaged so that issue gets addressed.
 
Thanks.

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I feel strongly that this is a UX problem for anyone, not just those visually impaired. The difference in contrast is super low. I can barely see which tab is active -- I need to squint.

General UX problem for Chrome.

The contrast ratio is going to vary per platform and per local system settings, because the background tabs are semi-transparent.

@pkasting, default everything -- with a brand new install. There is no tab transparency that I can see on my Mac, and I can't see what's active without squinting.

Isn't it possible to calculate the real color and adjust the transparency to ensure a perceivable contrast ratio?

@10: "Varies per platform" :).  (Also, this bug is marked and titled for Windows only.  If you want Mac to be in scope we should expand the OS tags.)

I measure the colors on my Mac as #505050 (active incognito) vs. #373737 (inactive incognito) for a contrast ratio of 1.5.

@pkasting what do you think about woxxom's suggestion that we make it adapt to the platform? Or do you have in mind a solution for this? I hate for us to punt on it because of the platform/environment differences, when it's so commonly an issue. I don't think this is a made up accessibility issue, but a real usability one for people with average sight.

I'm happy if for us to expand the OS tags as it probably makes sense for us to improve it on Mac as well.

I think the 1.5 contrast is borderline.  I wouldn't mind it being higher, e.g. 2.  Lower than 1.5 definitely seems too low.  How to solve I don't know.  It's not so much a matter of being able to adapt, but of designing what your adaptation is.  You want both active and inactive tabs to contrast with the frame, as well as each other, but you also may have arbitrary frame colors (on Windows), including opposite frame colors in active and inactive windows, and you don't really want the tab colors to change radically (or really at all) as the frame color changes.

Since the tabs have borders, it's okay if the background tabs will have the same background color as the frame, I think. Or vice versa for the active tab. The important thing is the difference between the background colors of the active and inactive tabs. Isn't it possible to ensure the difference by calculating the real frame color brightness and overlaying a black or white color accordingly with the transparency based on the said calculation? I guess it may be hard in case an image file is used in the theme, but it's still possible to calc the pixel average at a given location. 

The borders are not guaranteed to have enough contrast against the frame to be visible (per explicit instruction from the original MD visual designer).

As I said, the problem here is not the technical difficulty of ensuring there's contrast at any one time.  That's easy.  The problem is designing a solution that doesn't e.g. make the tab colors invert when you focus a different window in certain themes, or the like.

 Issue 776682  has been merged into this issue.

 Issue 793831  has been merged into this issue.

Hey all, any progress on this?

As an extra data point, I have an old monitor with pretty terrible contrast and I really cannot tell the difference between an active and inactive incognito tab. 

This feels like a high severity accessibility bug and I'm surprised it hasn't been looked at for a year.

Have you tried this out with --top-chrome-md=material-refresh ?  Does it work any better for you?

Calling this obsolete in refresh since background tabs no longer have a color.