Does this tool change my color to make it pass?

No. Your input color is treated as fixed and becomes the surface for the pairing. What the tool returns are neutral partners that already meet the minimum, so applying the fix means substituting the other color in the pairing.

What if the failing color is the one I cannot change?

Then the replacement has to come from the other side of the pair. Keep your color as the text or the surface and choose a listed neutral for the opposite role, then re-check, because the roles do not carry the same usable range.

Can it target AAA instead of AA?

The filter is fixed at 4.5 to 1 for AA. Because the results are ordered from strongest contrast down, entries near the top often clear 7 to 1 as well, but the page does not filter or label them, so the printed ratio is what to read.

The suggested neutral passes but looks heavy. Is that expected?

Yes. A neutral strong enough to clear the threshold against a mid-tone surface is usually well separated, and on a light or dark surface it reads as stark. Choosing an entry lower in the list trades some contrast for softness, as long as it still clears the line.

Why is the list so short if many colors would work?

Because the candidate ramp itself is narrow: twenty-one neutrals at fixed lightness steps, filtered at the threshold and trimmed to the best eight. A wider, tinted search is outside what the ramp covers.

Minimum Contrast Auto-Fixer

Base color

Accessible neutrals (AA contrast)

#000000

5.71:1

#000000

5.71:1

#030303

5.61:1

#0b0b0b

5.35:1

#161616

4.92:1

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Minimum Contrast Auto-Fixer takes a color whose pairing has failed and returns neutral alternatives that reach the 4.5 to 1 AA minimum against it.

What is Minimum Contrast Auto-Fixer?

Minimum Contrast Auto-Fixer starts from a color and returns the neutrals that already satisfy a contrast minimum against it. It is the repair side of the pair problem: instead of telling you whether a combination passes, it assumes one side is fixed, generates candidates for the other, and keeps only the ones that clear 4.5 to 1, strongest first.

What the fix actually consists of is worth stating precisely, because the tool does not edit your color:

Your input color becomes the surface, and stays exactly as entered.
Twenty-one candidate neutrals are generated by stepping lightness from 0 to 1 in 5% increments at zero chroma.
Candidates below 4.5 to 1 against your color are discarded, and the rest are ordered by ratio.
The eight strongest survivors are shown, each previewed as text over your input color with its hex value and ratio.

The fix is therefore a substitution: the failing color in the pairing is replaced with one of the listed neutrals rather than being nudged until it passes. That is a real constraint in practice, because a brand color that fails cannot be repaired by this tool at all; what changes is the other half of the pair. The underlying figure is the usual WCAG 2.x contrast calculation, with each color linearised out of sRGB and weighted 0.2126 red, 0.7152 green and 0.0722 blue into a relative luminance, divided and offset by 0.05, and rounded to two decimals.

A few boundaries follow from how narrow the fix is.

Your color is never modified. If the failing color is the one that has to stay, this page tells you what to put with it, not how to lighten or darken it.
Every candidate is a pure neutral. Tinted replacements have to be taken from the list and re-checked after adjustment.
The threshold is fixed at 4.5 to 1. There is no way to ask for 3 to 1 on a large-text pairing or 7 to 1 for the enhanced level.
Only the top eight passing options are listed, so the list stops short of the full passing set.
Passing the ratio is not the same as reading well. A neutral that just clears the line is the riskiest entry in the list when the text is small or the font is light.
One pair at a time, with no alpha and no surface behind it.

Use this page as the last step of a fix: run the check first, confirm what actually failed, then come here for replacements. Prefer an entry that clears the threshold with room to spare rather than the first one that passes, since the aim is a pairing that survives weight changes and smaller sizes.

The name describes the job plainly: a minimum contrast auto fixer exists to fix failing contrast by returning the neutrals that pass AA contrast. What it deliberately does not do is the more ambitious form of a contrast fix, which is to nudge your own color by a few percent of lightness until it clears the threshold while keeping its hue. That is usually what a designer wants when the failing color is a brand tone, and because this page never modifies its input, a manual adjustment is the right route when the color itself has to change.

How to use Minimum Contrast Auto-Fixer

Enter the color that must not change in the swatch field, which will act as the surface.
Read the candidate grid, each entry previewed as text on that color.
Check the ratio printed under each candidate and choose one with headroom above 4.5 to 1 rather than the first that passes.
Re-run the threshold check with the replacement in place to confirm the pairing now clears AA.

When to use Minimum Contrast Auto-Fixer vs related tools

Use the minimum contrast auto-fixer when a pairing has already failed a check and one side of it cannot move. Confirming the failure itself belongs with the contrast checker or the WCAG 2.1 AA checker, building a fresh set of pairings from a new base is the accessible color pair finder, and checking that the replacement reads well once applied is the text readability checker.

Privacy & Security

This tool runs entirely in your browser — no data ever leaves your device. There is no server round-trip, no upload, no logging, and no account required. Your input is processed locally using client-side JavaScript and is never stored, transmitted, or accessible to anyone else. When you close the tab, everything disappears.