Bonjour! Chloe here. I see a massive trend in modern UI design: light gray text on a white background. It looks sleek, minimal, and modern on our expensive retina displays.
But out in the real world? It's a disaster.
The Reality of User Environments
Your users aren't always sitting in a perfectly lit room looking at a 4K monitor. They are checking their phones outside in the glare of the sun. They are using cheap, low-contrast office monitors. They might have visual impairments.If your text doesn't meet the WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1, you are actively excluding users from your website.
Checking Contrast Fast
Before handing off designs to developers, I always use a Color Contrast Checker. I just plug in my background hex code and my foreground text color, and the tool instantly tells me if it passes the AA or AAA accessibility standards.Please, let's make the web readable again!