Teach & case
Help a near-peer reason through the idea — when you explain it, you understand it best — then read the real decision it comes from.
Help Remy pick readable colours
What you've shown you can teach
A real case · you decide
Remy and the poster nobody could read
Remy — a student designer whose vivid poster looked striking on screen but was unreadable when printed and posted
Remy's event poster uses bright blue text on a bright orange background — the two colours look totally different, so Remy assumed the text would pop. On the wall, people squint and can't read it. If the hues are so different, why is it so hard to read?
Readability is driven by CONTRAST, and contrast is a LUMINANCE ratio — how light vs. dark two colours are — not how far apart their hues are. A saturated blue and a saturated orange can sit at nearly the SAME luminance, so the text and background are equally "bright" and blur together.
WCAG puts a number on it: the contrast ratio between text and background should be at least 4.5:1 for normal text. That ratio is computed from luminance, so "these look really different" can still fail — and a plain dark-on-light pairing can easily pass.
Remy insists the blue-on-orange is fine "because the colours are completely different." Is different-hue enough for readable contrast?
To fix it, Remy considers swapping the orange for an even MORE different hue (say, green). Best move?
Remy's habit now is to check the contrast RATIO, not the vibe: pick the palette for brand and mood, then make sure text and background are far enough apart in luminance to clear WCAG. "They look really different" is a feeling; the ratio is the fact.