Secondary text falls below 4.5:1 contrast in both themes

[bpmore]

Bug description

Grey secondary text at 13–14px falls under the 4.5:1 required by WCAG 2.1 SC 1.4.3 (Level AA) in both themes. None of it is large-scale text, so the 3:1 allowance does not apply.

Measured with axe-core against the resolved computed colours:

Ratio	Element	Foreground	Background	Size	Where
4.24:1	"Check All"	#71717b	#f0f0f2	13px	/cp/roles/create
3.48:1	"Pro" badge	#ff269e	#ffffff	14px bold	/cp/utilities/licensing
3.67:1	tab label	#71717b	#18181b	14px	dark theme
3.84:1	"1–3 of 3" pagination	#71717b	#131315	14px	dark theme

Required: 4.50:1.

Three of the four are the same token — grey-500 (#71717b) — used for secondary text against both the light panel and the dark chrome. It clears 3:1 everywhere but never reaches 4.5:1.

The fourth is the brand pink used as text on the licensing screen.

How to reproduce

1. composer create-project statamic/statamic, log in
2. Visit /cp/roles/create in the light theme and check the "Check All" label
3. Visit /cp/utilities/licensing and check the pink "Pro" label
4. Switch to the dark theme and check a tab label and the listing pagination count

Or run axe-core with the color-contrast rule on those screens.

Suggested fix

• Move secondary text from grey-500 to grey-600 in light and grey-400 in dark. #52525c on #f0f0f2 gives 7.4:1; #9f9fa9 on #131315 gives 7.9:1.
• Give the pink a darker variant for text use and keep the current brand pink for fills and borders, where 3:1 is the bar.

Both are token changes rather than component changes, which is why I've filed this rather than opened a PR — the exact replacement values are a design call.

Note

Non-text contrast is a separate problem, reported in #15397. Fixing the text tokens here won't address the control borders there.

[duncanmcclean]

Thanks for the detailed measurements. As Jack said over on #15415, these colours were chosen deliberately to balance legibility with visual hierarchy across all of the selectable grey palettes. Some combinations do land just under the 4.5:1 threshold, but we've found the balance works well in practice, and bumping secondary text up makes it compete with primary text in a few places.

For anyone who needs or prefers the higher-contrast treatment, there's a "Stricter WCAG 2.2 Mode" toggle in user preferences that adjusts the Control Panel accordingly.

I'm going to close this to keep the default appearance as it is. Non-text contrast is being tracked separately in #15397.