Accessible (AA) Theme

A pair of accessible, high-contrast VS Code themes designed for readability, clarity, and reduced eye strain. This theme family includes both Dark and Light variants, tuned for WCAG AA accessibility. Based on the article Accessible syntax highlight theme.

Table of Contents

• Features
• Palette
• Installation
• Usage
• Accessibility
• Recommended fonts to be used with this theme:
• Contributing
• License
• Changelog
• Sponsor me

Features

• Carefully balanced color palette with consistent contrasts
• Distinct hues for:
  • Keywords, variables, constants, and operators
  • Brackets, parentheses, and punctuation
  • Functions, methods, and object properties
  • Classes, types, and module references
  • Strings, numbers, symbols, and regex
• Markdown support (headings, code blocks, links, emphasis)
• Git status decorations and terminal ANSI colors
• WCAG AA contrast ratio for editor and UI elements
• Bracket pair highlighting colors optimized for quick scanning

Palette

Core colors used across both dark and light variants, UI colors are derived from these:

With dark background: Sky Captain - #262831:

With dark background: Gram's Hair - #F5F6F7:

Installation

1. Open Extensions in VS Code (Ctrl+Shift+X / ⌘+Shift+X)
2. Search for Accessible (AA) Themes
3. Install and select either:
   • Accessible (AA) Dark
   • Accessible (AA) Light

Usage

Once installed, open the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P / ⌘+Shift+P) and run: Preferences: Color Theme

Select Accessible (AA) Dark or Accessible (AA) Light.

Accessibility

• Meets WCAG AA contrast standards for text and UI (UI to be tested, stay tuned!)
• Designed to be legible for long coding sessions
• Balanced bracket colors for better nesting visibility
• Comments are distinguishable without being distracting

Recommended fonts to be used with this theme:

Menlo for Powerline, Menlo, Consolas, DejaVu Sans Mono, 'Droid Sans Mono', 'monospace', monospace

Contributing

Want to contribute? Please read the CONTRIBUTING.md and CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

Changelog

See the CHANGELOG.md for details on the latest updates.

Sponsor me

I'm an Open Source evangelist, creating stuff that does not exist yet to help get rid of secondary activities and to enhance systems already in place, be it documentation or web sites.

The sponsorship is an unique opportunity to alleviate more hours for me to maintain my projects, create new ones and contribute to the large community we're all part of :)

Support me on GitHub Sponsors.

p.s. Ukraine is still under brutal Russian invasion. A lot of Ukrainian people are hurt, without shelter and need help. You can help in various ways, for instance, directly helping refugees, spreading awareness, putting pressure on your local government or companies. You can also support Ukraine by donating e.g. to Red Cross, Ukraine humanitarian organisation or donate Ambulances for Ukraine.