Colour contrast for small teams

It comes up on almost every project, usually later than it should. Most advice about colour contrast assumes a team that does not exist at your size. Here is the version that does not.

Consistency is the quiet half of design work: it rarely gets complimented, and its absence is noticed immediately. The practical test is whether someone new to the project could tell, in a minute, that it had been handled.

What to keep

Body text needs a 4.5:1 contrast ratio against its background. Getting it slightly wrong is survivable. Ignoring it entirely is not. Write the reasoning down alongside the decision, because the reasoning is what changes first.

What to drop

Process that exists to coordinate ten people is overhead when there are two of you. The cost of getting this wrong is rarely visible on the day it happens.

Where to start

Contrast checkers take seconds and settle arguments. Where this goes wrong is almost never a lack of knowledge. It is the sort of thing that looks like polish right up until it costs you an enquiry.

In practice

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

None of this needs a rewrite. Most of it is a morning's work once someone decides to do it.