The day my phone brightness ruined my whole color palette
I spent 6 months designing a portfolio site with a subtle gray on gray text combo. Everything looked fine until I showed it to my buddy in Seattle and he squinted at his phone screen. That's when I realized I had my screen brightness cranked to 100% the whole time, so the low contrast looked fine to me. Now I check everything at 50% brightness and on a cheap monitor, not just my fancy one. But here's the thing, is it on me to design for bad screens or should people just adjust their settings? I'm torn between following WCAG ratios strictly or just doing what looks good on my setup. Has anyone else had a similar wake up call with their own display settings?
Man, six months is a long time to not catch that. But honestly, how often does the average person stare at their phone at full brightness? Most phones auto-adjust anyway, so the gray on gray probably looks bad for like five seconds until the screen dims. Spending weeks chasing WCAG numbers for every possible screen out there sounds like a good way to never finish anything.