How to Design for Color Blindness

Color blindness or color vision deficiency (CVD) affects around 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women worldwide. This means that for every 100 users that visit your website or app, up to 8 people could actually experience the content much differently that youd expect. But how do you ensure that your user experience appeals equally to these visitors? Were here to lend a helping hand. So, before you run to your design team in a panic, take a look at our roundup of top things to consider when designing a UX for color accessibility.

First up, what exactly is color blindness?

Most color blind people are able to see things just as clearly as the rest of the population, the difference is their inability to distinguish red, green, or blue light. The deficiency is the result of a mutation in the X-chromosome meaning women are more likely to be carriers than sufferers and it can manifest in 3 main ways.

The most common is red/green color blindness, where sufferers mix up all colors which have red or green as part of the whole color. Those affected by Protan color blindness are less sensitive to red light, whilst sufferers of Deuteranopia have the same problem with green. For example, a person with Protanopia will confuse blue and purple because they cant recognize the red element of the color purple. The third type of color deficiency, Tritanopia, is the least common and refers to sufferers who struggle to distinguish blue or yellow light. The image below shows what the rainbow may look like to individuals with each of these forms of color blindness. If you need to know more about it check the colour blindness tool.

How Can I Design for Better Color Accessibility?

You might be thinking: why should I bother designing for such a small group of users? But generally, the elements that are favorable for colorblind users are actually considered to be good design practices in the wider sense. So if your site is well designed, it should already be accessible to all users.

Designing for accessibility doesnt mean that the aesthetic integrity of your design needs to suffer. With that in mind, here are the top five elements you should be focusing on for a colorblind-friendly UX:

1. Use both colors and symbols

You shouldnt rely on color alone to convey a message; for example, certain types of color blindness might make it difficult or even impossible to see common red error messages. One approach is to use both colors and symbols where users attention is required. A good example of this is Facebooks form fields and the error messaging attached.

2. Keep it minimal

You should limit the color palette you use for your website; the fewer colors you use in your design, the fewer instances there will be for confusion.

Not only is minimalistic design a timeless and aesthetically pleasing trend, its also useful when youre designing for color accessibility.

3. Use patterns and textures to show contrast

Try to use different textures, as opposed to multiple colors, for elements that require emphasis. For example, it might be difficult for color blind users to interpret graphs and charts. In this case, its better to use contrasting patterns and, where possible, place text instead.

4. Be careful with contrasting colors and hues

Instead of relying on black and white as your only contrasting colors; try to use a range of clearly contrasting colors and hues in your design. For example, the game Word Feud uses four colors for its tiles that can be easily distinguished by those with or without color vision deficiency.

5. Avoid bad color combos

You need to be smart when picking out your color combinations. Since color blindness affects people in different ways, its difficult to determine which colors are safe to use in web design. That being said, heres a few color combinations to avoid because theyre a potential nightmare to color blind users:

Green & Red
Green & Brown
Blue & Purple
Green & Blue
Light Green & Yellow
Blue & Grey
Green & Grey
Green & Black

Well Some people go years without knowing theyre color blind as the effects can go relatively unnoticed unless someone else points them out. The image below is commonly used to test for color blindness give it a go! (You can find a link to the full test at the bottom of this article.)

Still not sure?

Ishihara Color Blindness Test: You can take the 38 plate based test and get feedback as well.

Color Blind Check: an Android App created by Colorblindor where you can test whether you are color blind in 60 seconds.

Coblis: Color Blindness Simulator: here you can upload an image and take a look at what itd look like through the eyes of people with different types of color blindness.

Mobile Apps: heres 3 Android and iOS apps specifically developed to help color blind users.

Conclusion

Generally, UX designers should create websites that are accessible and user-friendly to all. Unfortunately there isnt a one-size-fits-all solution when designing for color blindness specifically, but there are a few essential UX design principles to bear in mind that will certainly help:

Dont only rely on color to convey a message
Keep your color palette limited to 2 or 3 colors
Use texture and patterns to show contrast
Carefully select any contrasting colors and shades
Avoid using bad color combinations