Hot take: my orange buttons passed every checker and still failed my uncle | Color Contrast Checks

Robin Mason · 2026-09-30T07:10:02.945805+00:00

Last month my uncle Ray came by my place in Akron to look at the website I built for his bait shop, and he could not read the checkout button at all. He has that yellow spot in his eyes, the macular thing, and he said the orange on white looked like a blurry smudge. Every contrast tool I ran said the ratio was 3.2 to 1, which passes for big text, so I figured I was fine. Turns out the button text was only 15px and bold, and he was reading it on his phone outside in the sun. Check your stuff at small sizes and outdoors before you call it done, because the checker does not know who is holding the phone. Has anyone else had a color pass the test but fail a real person?

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Hot take: my orange buttons passed every checker and still failed my uncle | Color Contrast Checks - The Design Community Hub