Almost got a failing grade on a client project because I didn't check contrast once

I used to just pick colors that looked good and call it done, but last week a client in Denver sent back my whole landing page saying their 60 year old eyes couldn't read the body text. Now I run every color combo through a free contrast checker before I even start building. Has anyone else had a client call them out on readability like that?

3 comments

3 Comments

theabennett6d ago

their 60 year old eyes couldn't read the body text" that's brutal but honestly kind of fair... I had a similar moment when my own mom printed out my portfolio and said the gray text gave her a headache. Now I'm paranoid about contrast too.

miles_jackson95d ago

The whole gray text trend is such a trap because it looks good on a designer's calibrated monitor but falls apart everywhere else. @nancy3's wifi comment is dead on too because people don't always realize their browser or device settings can make things worse. What nobody talks about is how bad gray text is for readability on projectors or cheap office monitors where everything already looks washed out. My buddy runs a tech meetup and had to beg presenters to stop using light gray on white because half the room couldn't see the slides. Contrast ratios are one of those boring things that never gets brought up in design school but actually matters more than font choice in the real world. If someone over 40 has to squint, the whole "clean aesthetic" argument goes out the window.

nancy36d ago

So I spent a whole day making my site's text "barely there gray" because I thought it looked classy. Then my dad asked if my wifi was broken since the page wouldn't load right.