Contrastproof renders your page in a real browser, checks every text color against the background behind it, and gives you the exact color to use instead.
Scanned 2026-08-27 · https://substack.com/
3 more below, plus the dark-mode pass and the palette
A real scan of substack.com, run by the same engine your website goes through. Nothing here is illustration: this is the report, exactly as it arrives.
Four rules now demand the same contrast level, and low contrast is the failure the web fails most.
All four ask for WCAG level AA, which is 4.5:1 on normal text.
92 pieces of text on substack.com sit at 4.48:1 against a requirement of 4.5. They miss by 0.02. No eye finds that, and no free checker tells you the gray that fixes it is #777677.
Ordered by how much of the page each covers, measured against the dominant surface. Surfaces are not held to a text ratio, so they are not marked against one.
The color that matters is the one that composited on screen, after the cascade, after JavaScript, after the semi-transparent panel. We load your page in Chromium and scroll it so lazy sections paint before we measure.
A scan of substack.com finds 145 failing elements, which sounds like weeks of work. They are not 145 problems. They are 5 colors used over and over: one caption gray, one link blue, one button fill. Fix a color once and every element wearing it is fixed too.
We take the color you already chose and move it lighter or darker until it passes, holding your hue exactly, so the fix still reads as the same color rather than a new one. It is arithmetic, not a language model, so it is instant and it is the same answer every time.
One payment, for a file you keep. Not a subscription, and not a widget that sits on your website.
You see your results before you decide, and payment happens on your report rather than here.
A free checker ends at the number. A widget leaves your colors alone and adjusts the page for visitors instead. We give you the values and get out of the way.
Entry prices as published by each company in August 2026: accessiBe and UserWay both start at $490 a year, and AudioEye quotes on request. Overlay widgets do more than contrast, and this product does only contrast. The row that matters is the third one.
We point Contrastproof at itself and hold this site to the same numbers your report is made of.
Every color on this page came out of the same repair function the scanner runs on yours. None of them was picked by eye.
The scan reads this whole site the way it reads yours, light mode and dark. A color that passes on white can fail on a dark background, so both are measured and both arrive in your report.
The muted gray we set body captions in. A button edge on dark cards that left the control with no visible boundary. A badge sitting on exactly 4.50:1, which fails by a hair. None of the three was visible to us by eye.