Browser Extension for Color & Accessibility

Every colour tool, one coherent workspace

Home and four focused spaces bring eighteen tools together — colour, contrast, accessibility, inspection and code — on whatever page you are viewing. Search with one shortcut, work in the popup or side panel, and keep everything on your machine.

Store listings

Previous release

Reviewed, signed and they keep themselves updated.

ZIP packages

1.0.2 · New

Auric Studio and Hindi, available now. Download

Add to Chrome Add to Firefox

Edge, Brave, Opera, Vivaldi and Arc install from the Chrome listing. Safari: convert the ZIP.

Auric Artisan 1.0.2 open over a web page, showing the new Home workspace, page actions, recent colours and side-panel shortcut.
  1. Search tools, colours and settings
  2. Home and four spaces
  3. One-click actions for this page
  4. Hand off to the side panel

Captured from 1.0.2

  • 18

    tools in one popup

  • 80

    accessibility rules, across 32 WCAG success criteria

  • 12

    vision simulations you can view the live page through

  • 4

    packages — Chrome, Edge, Opera and Firefox

  • 2

    interface languages — English and हिन्दी

  • 0

    network calls, and no telemetry

Eighteen tools

One popup, not eighteen extensions

Home plus Colour, Check, Code and Saved replace the old command grid. Every tool still ships in the same build: no upgrade, second install or cut-down edition.

Home

The first thing the popup shows: one-click actions for the page you are on, the last pair you checked, recent colours, and a way back to whatever you were doing.

On Home

  • Colour of the day
  • Page actions
  • Recent colours
  • Continue
  • Pinned tools
  • Pick a colour, Contrast, Inspect and Audit this page, one click each
  • Press / or Ctrl K to search every tool, setting and page
  • Open the side panel to keep the whole studio beside the page
Alt + Shift + A opens it on the active tab
The popup's Home space: search, the five spaces, four action tiles, the last pair checked and recent colours.
Home, on a demo page. Captured from 1.0.2.

Colour

Version 1.0.2 brings the website's colour picker into the extension and expands it: twelve formats, contrast, colour-vision previews and production-ready code all live beside the same colour.

Tools in this space

  • Picker
  • Page palette
  • Image
  • Gradient
  • Mix

Also inside: Harmony, Scale and Convert

  • HEX, RGB, HSL, HSV, HWB, CMYK, LAB, LCH, OKLAB, OKLCH, XYZ and Display P3
  • Harmonies, an eleven-step OKLCH scale and sRGB or P3 chroma guidance
  • Copy CSS, wide-gamut CSS, Tailwind v4, SwiftUI, Compose or Android code
Alt + Shift + E extracts the page palette
The redesigned Picker showing a selected colour, twelve formats and an OKLCH tonal scale.
The Picker's Scale view. Captured from 1.0.2.

Check

Check any pair with WCAG 2.2 and APCA, then move to the nearest passing colour in one click. For live elements, the Inspector reads the real computed backdrop through stacked translucent layers instead of assuming white.

Tools in this space

  • Contrast
  • Vision
  • Audit
  • Findings
  • WCAG 2 ratios with AA and AAA verdicts for text and non-text
  • APCA lightness contrast alongside them
  • The closest AA colour, plus suggestions that keep the character of your brand
Alt + Shift + C jumps straight here
The redesigned Contrast workspace showing WCAG and APCA results for a text and background pair.
Contrast, after moving the text to the nearest passing colour. Captured from 1.0.2.

Code

Inspect any element. Hover for a light read-out, then click to pin the full card away from the element. Contrast leads; box model, layout, colours, typography, accessibility and CSS follow in seven sections with useful summaries.

Tools in this space

  • Inspect
  • Tokens
  • Snippets
  • An “Aa” sample, ratio, pass badges and the nearest passing text colour
  • A real box-model diagram, transitions, shadows, type, colour and layout
  • Accessibility problems explained with a concrete fix
Auric Artisan's pinned Inspector showing a selected element's contrast, box model and page controls.
The Inspector, pinned on a button. Contrast comes first. Captured from 1.0.2.

Saved

What you keep stays in the browser's local extension storage: colours, palettes, picks and snippets never leave the machine.

Tools in this space

  • Library
  • History
  • On the web
Library
500 colours and your saved palettes
History
Your last 50 picks
On the web
The site's Analyzer, palette libraries and colour labs, one click away

Side panel

Keep the whole workspace beside the page

Dock Auric Studio beside the page and leave it open while you browse. It follows the active tab and drives the same picks, pins, audits and Inspector you use from the popup.

  1. Home keeps page actions, colours and recent work within reach
  2. All four spaces reflow into a narrow, persistent layout
  3. Continue picks up the last tool exactly where you left it
The Auric Studio side panel docked beside a web page with page actions, colour of the day and palettes.
The side panel on Chromium. Firefox opens the same workspace as a sidebar. Captured from 1.0.2.

Accessibility

A real audit, not a contrast checker

Scan runs 80 rules over the live DOM and files what it finds by severity, with the WCAG success criterion attached to each. The ARIA checks are driven by the ARIA 1.2 matrix and the HTML-AAM mapping rather than by guesswork, so "this attribute is not allowed on this role" is a lookup, not a heuristic.

Findings you can act on

  • Each finding names the rule, the criterion and the element it came from
  • Four severities — critical, serious, moderate, minor
  • Click a finding to outline the element on the page
  • Runs off the main thread, so a big page does not freeze while it scans
The redesigned accessibility audit with numbered page pins, a finding card and the Check workspace.
Numbered pins on the page match the list in the side panel; a finding offers the nearest passing colour. Captured from 1.0.2.

What the 80 rules check

Eight families, across 32 WCAG success criteria

  • ARIA

    Role validity, attribute support per role, value parsing, required attributes, required parent and child roles, broken references, focusable aria-hidden

  • Names

    Missing and whitespace-only accessible names, visible label contained in the name, non-descriptive link text, identical links with different destinations

  • Structure

    Heading order and empty headings, landmarks and duplicates, list and definition list structure, table headers, duplicate ids, content outside landmarks

  • Forms

    Labels and broken for targets, placeholder used as a label, autocomplete validity, radio grouping, required marking, error message association

  • Media

    Image, area and image-button alt text, meaningful and decorative SVG, captions and audio description, audible autoplay, frame titles

  • Keyboard

    Positive tabindex, controls that cannot be focused, removed focus indicators, 24 × 24 target size, off-screen elements still in the tab order, nested interactives

  • Contrast

    Text contrast at AA and AAA, non-text and control boundary contrast, links distinguished by colour alone

  • Document

    Page language and validity, title and how descriptive it is, zoom suppression, skip link, locked text spacing, timed refresh, unpausable motion, prefers-reduced-motion

Details

Also in the box

  • Auric Artisan's searchable dropdown filtering a country list on a web page's form.

    Universal form pickers

    Thirteen switches cover dropdowns, multi-select, date, time, number, range and colour. Long lists gain search, while “Leave designed controls alone” preserves a site's own UI.

  • The redesigned right-click menu naming the clicked element and opening a colour-vision submenu.

    A menu that knows what you clicked

    Relevant actions come first, a quick bar holds the actions you pin, and typing filters everything. Shift + right-click always opens the browser's own menu.

  • Search everything

    Press / or Ctrl K to search tools, settings, actions and auricartisan.com pages, with exact title matches placed first.

  • Sealed off from the page

    Everything injected lives in a closed shadow root, so a site's CSS cannot reach into the picker or the inspector — and the extension cannot disturb the site's layout.

  • Auric Studio's Home workspace translated into Hindi.

    English and हिन्दी

    The popup, the side panel, the injected menus and every accessibility finding switch language together — and the calendar's month and day names follow.

  • The new two-pane Settings screen with theme, accent, size and language controls.

    Settings that read like settings

    Appearance, Pickers, Right-click, Tools, Data and Shortcuts live in a two-pane view. Changes save as you make them and reach every extension surface.

Permissions & privacy

What it asks for, and why

Installing this shows a prompt saying Auric Artisan can read and change your data on all websites. That is a real permission and it is worth understanding before you accept it, so here is exactly what is declared and what is done with it.

0 network calls

Nothing is sent anywhere

No analytics, no accounts, no remote calls. Everything you pick, scan or save is written to your browser's local extension storage and never leaves the machine. The Firefox package states this to Mozilla formally, as required data collection of none.

  • Access to every site

    The tools work on whatever page you are looking at, and the extension cannot know in advance which sites those will be — so the manifest declares all of them. There is no narrower honest version of this permission for a tool whose whole job is inspecting arbitrary pages.

  • A script on every page

    A small content script loads on each page you visit and then waits. Until you invoke a tool it registers a listener and does nothing else — it does not read your content, and it does not change the page.

  • Changing a page is opt-in

    Everything that modifies a site — the custom form pickers, the replaced colour input, the custom right-click menu — ships switched off. Each is a toggle in the popup, because rewriting someone else's page should be your decision.

Manifest permissions

Asked at install, or only when a feature first needs them

Manifest permissions and what each is for
Permission When What it is for
<all_urls>
At install
 Lets the tools run on whatever page you are on
activeTab
At install
 Acts on the tab you are actually looking at when you invoke a tool
scripting
At install
 Injects the picker, inspector and audit on demand
storage
At install
 Keeps your history, palettes, snippets and settings — locally
clipboardWrite
At install
 Copies a colour, token or snippet when you ask for it
contextMenus
At install
 Adds the extension's own entries to the right-click menu
sidePanel
At install · Chromium only
 Lets the workspace dock beside the page instead of hanging from the toolbar. Firefox reaches the same panel through sidebar_action, which is not a permission — so the Firefox build asks for five, not six
clipboardRead
On request
 Pasting a colour in — asked for the first time you do it
downloads
On request
 Saving an export or a screenshot to disk
sessions
On request
 Restoring your workspace across browser restarts

Read it yourself

An unpacked extension is just a folder. The manifest is manifest.json at the top; the script that runs on pages is content.js beside it. Both are plain, unminified files.

Extension privacy policy

Install

Two stores, or the ZIP

The store listings are reviewed, signed and keep themselves updated; they currently serve the previous release. Version 1.0.2 is available now in the ZIP packages below for anyone who wants the new workspace immediately or prefers to load the folder themselves.

  • Chrome Web Store Previous release

    Chrome & Chromium

    Chrome, Edge, Brave, Opera, Vivaldi and Arc all install from this one listing — every Chromium browser accepts it, and none of them need a separate store. Updates arrive on their own.

    • One click, no developer mode, survives a restart
    • Google reviews each version before it ships
    Add to Chrome Download ZIP · 1.0.2

    Also as edge and opera archives — byte-identical, named for their stores

  • Firefox Add-ons Previous release

    Firefox

    A genuinely different package: the Gecko background format, its own add-on id, and the data-collection disclosure Mozilla has required since Firefox 140 — declared as none, which is the truth.

    • Signed by Mozilla, so it installs permanently
    • Reviewed against the disclosure it declares
    Add to Firefox Download ZIP · 1.0.2

    The ZIP loads as a temporary add-on until you quit; the store listing is the one that persists.

  • Converter macOS + Xcode

    Safari

    Safari takes web extensions through an Xcode project rather than a ZIP. Unzip the Chromium package, run Apple's converter against the folder on macOS, then build and run what it generates. 

    xcrun safari-web-extension-converter ./auric-suite-chrome-1.0.2
    Chromium ZIP to convert

If you would rather not use a store

From either store this is one click and you can skip this section entirely. The manual path is here because an unpacked extension is a folder you can read before you trust it — and because browsers do not let a website open their internal extension pages, so step two is a copy-and-paste rather than a link.

  1. Download and unzip

    Take the package for your browser from above and unzip it somewhere permanent — the browser loads the extension from that folder every time it starts, so it cannot live in Downloads if you clear that out.

  2. Open the extensions page

    Paste the address for your browser into the address bar.

    chrome://extensions
    about:debugging#/runtime/this-firefox

  3. Load it

    On Chromium, turn on “Developer mode”, then “Load unpacked” and choose the unzipped folder. On Firefox, choose “Load Temporary Add-on” and select the manifest.json inside it — which lasts until you quit, because Firefox only keeps signed add-ons across restarts. The store listing is the one that persists.

  4. Pin it

    Pin Auric Artisan to the toolbar, then click the icon or press Alt + Shift + A. It docks to the browser's side panel too, if you would rather keep it open beside the page.

Keyboard shortcuts

Change any of them in your browser's shortcut editor

  • Alt + Shift + A

    Open the extension on the active tab

  • Alt + Shift + C

    Open the contrast checker

  • Alt + Shift + E

    Extract the page palette

  • Alt + Shift + V

    Toggle the deuteranopia simulation

  • Unassigned

    Inspect an element — set a key in your browser's shortcut editor

  • Unassigned

    Run a full accessibility audit — set a key in your browser's shortcut editor

Questions

Before you install

Everything else, from the first pick to exporting an audit, is in the user guide.

Where do I install it from?

The Chrome Web Store or Firefox Add-ons. Both listings are reviewed and signed, but currently serve the previous release. The ZIP links above provide version 1.0.2.

Edge, Brave, Opera, Vivaldi and Arc all install from the Chrome listing; there is no separate store for any of them.

What is the difference between the Chrome, Edge and Opera ZIPs?

Nothing at all — they are byte-identical copies of the same Chromium package, named for their store so an upload is never ambiguous. Take any one of them for any Chromium-family browser.

Firefox is different: a separate build with the Gecko background format, its own add-on id and Mozilla's data-collection disclosure.

Why does it need access to all websites?

Because the tools work on whatever page you are looking at, and the extension has no way to know in advance which sites those will be. A narrower permission would mean a tool that only works on a list of sites chosen ahead of time.

What is done with that access is deliberately small: a script loads on each page and stays inert until you invoke a tool, and every feature that changes the page itself is off until you switch it on.

Does it slow pages down?

The script that loads on each page registers a listener and stops there — no scanning, no observers, no work until you ask for something. The accessibility audit is the expensive part, and it only runs when you start it, off the main thread so the page stays responsive while it works.

Does it survive a Firefox restart?

From Firefox Add-ons, yes — it is signed, so it installs permanently like any other add-on.

The ZIP loaded through Load Temporary Add-on does not, and that is Firefox's rule for unsigned add-ons rather than a limitation of this one. If you are reinstalling it every morning, use the store listing.

Do I need an Auric Artisan account?

No. There is no sign-in anywhere in the extension and no account to create. It does not talk to this website, or to anything else.

Auric Artisan for the browser

Add it to your browser

No account, no telemetry, and every tool in the same build.

Add to Chrome Add to Firefox Read the guide