My boss made me redo a whole client slide deck over one color choice

I had this dark blue text on a navy background, looked fine to me on my monitor. Boss ran it through a contrast checker tool and it failed big time, like a 2.5:1 ratio. I switched the text to a light gray and got it over 7:1. The difference was crazy, you could actually read it from across the room. I spent 3 hours redoing all the slides because I didn't check first. Has anyone else had a client or boss catch a major fail you just missed?

3 comments

3 Comments

stella_shah892mo agoTop Commenter

Remember how many people have vision issues. My uncle has color blindness and that dark blue on navy would look like a solid block to him. Bosses who push for high contrast aren't just being picky, they're making sure clients with poor eyesight or older projectors can actually read the work. It's easy to forget our own screens aren't the only way people will see it.

alice4252mo ago

Our design team started running all mockups through a color blindness simulator last year. We caught about 30% of our slides failing for deuteranopia. Now we keep a high contrast palette saved as our default in Figma.

lucas9721mo ago

Ever notice how these tools show you stuff you just stop seeing? Like @stella_shah89 said, your own screen lies to you after staring too long. My old boss made us print every deck in grayscale before sending it out.