I'm not a programmer, but would something like this work?

https://www.jqueryscript.net/other/Simple-Accessible-jQuery-Color-Picker-Plugin-simplecolorpicker-js.html

Pre-populate eight, light-colored backgrounds?

Per discussion on Teaching & Learning Call, we recommend closing as won't fix due to complexity of fixing of this, and limited use case.

black is not just the default text color; it is the only color for some text in an assessment - users do not have any option to change the text color of the Table of Contents link within a quiz, question numbers or the letters that are listed in front of each answer option, the answer options True and False for true/false questions, or answer options for a few other question types (e.g., survey).

Without significant development work (which personally, I think would be a waste of resources), there's no way to limit the color palette of the picker and make it impossible for users to select a non-compliant color. The current color picker is not keyboard-accessible, so keyboard users must type a hex value into the box to specify a color. The following things would need to be done:

1. Find and implement an accessible jQuery color picker.

2. Remove the text box option to enter a color using hex.

3. Possibly also remove the option to specify a background image from URL.

4. Develop something to either find and automatically fix existing assessment background colors or inform instructors whose existing assessments are potentially affected that they may need to select a new color.

The last item would be the hardest - what can be done to ensure that existing assessments are "fixed", if they happen to have a non-compliant color? You can't eliminate color from some assessments only - it would have to be global for all assessments, or not at all. Would it even be possible to programmatically identify each affected assessment's color and select a color that is essentially the same, but lighter?

If the default text color is black, then perhaps we can reduce issues by limiting the color picker to light colors with appropriate contrast?

Else, perhaps a helpful hint near the feature in Settings about color contrast and perhaps a link to a resource like WebAIM's Contrast Checker:

https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/

Hopefully, there is an easy fix that would reduce compliance issues for instructors.

I'm opening this issue for further discussion about whether this should be a development change or further education.