Getting started with colour contrast
The version of this that works is simpler than the version most people imagine. A short on-ramp to colour contrast for teams who have not touched it before.
Consistency is the quiet half of design work: it rarely gets complimented, and its absence is noticed immediately. It is the sort of thing that looks like polish right up until it costs you an enquiry.
What it costs to ignore
Body text needs a 4.5:1 contrast ratio against its background. In practice this is a scheduling problem more than a technical one. Doing this properly once is usually cheaper than doing it approximately three times.
Your first week
- Find out what is already in place
- Light grey on white fails more often than designers expect
- Change one thing and measure it
Contrast checkers take seconds and settle arguments. It is worth being explicit about, because assumptions differ quietly. If it only works because one person remembers to do something, it does not work yet.
The short version
The measurable part of design is whether people can find what they came for and act on it without hesitating. Three things worth confirming about colour contrast before you move on:
- Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
- Light grey on white fails more often than designers expect — and you know whether that is true here
- There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped
If any of that sounds like a description of your current setup, it is fixable.