Color contrast checker caught me sleeping at the wheel

I put together a landing page last Tuesday that looked great on my monitor. Sent it to the client for review and they came back saying the text was unreadable. Ran it through a contrast checker and the light gray on white background failed at a 2.8 ratio. Had to go back and darken the text color which messed up the whole visual balance. Now I run every color combo through the WCAG tool before I even start styling. Anyone else have a color fail that slipped through because you trusted your eyes?

2 comments

2 Comments

tara3451d ago

Did you catch yourself staring at the monitor longer than usual trying to convince yourself it was fine? I had a similar moment last month on a client's email template, dark gray on a navy background that I swore worked. Turned out my brightness was cranked way up and the whole layout fell apart on a standard screen.

blair_dixon2d ago

Trusted your eyes" is such a polite way of saying "I was lazy and hoped for the best." I've definitely had that moment where my monitor lies to me and I swear the text looks fine until someone with an actual functioning retina points it out.