Design for the color blind

bfsoft

bfsoft

Junior Member
I recently worked with my first color blind client (a Warwickshrie plasterer) and it was really eye opening. Blue and orange were the only colors he can distinguish well so that's what we went with. Let me know what you think: Gavin Hill Plastering.

Any thoughts on web accessibilty for the colour blind? I've read up on it but would be interested to hear your views.
 
Cool. That must have been an interesting job to work on. I was reading/researching colour theory and perception the other day (which led me to this).

I haven't done much work online, but how do you work around different monitors etc.? I'm aware the whole web-safe colour thing is pretty much redundant being that hardly anyone uses monitors with 256 (or whatever is was) colours. There's surely still discrepancies in how different monitors and different browsers replicate the RGB values you set for the site though?

Also, and this is in no way meant as a derogatory comment, why was it a concern in the first place? Your client's colour-blind, but most of his clients aren't.
 
matt said:
Also, and this is in no way meant as a derogatory comment, why was it a concern in the first place? Your client's colour-blind, but most of his clients aren't.
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It should always be a concern—I guess working with someone who is directly affected brings the concern to the forefront a little more, making it more noticeable and realistic…
 
Harry said:
It should always be a concern—I guess working with someone who is directly affected brings the concern to the forefront a little more, making it more noticeable and realistic…
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Interesting, I agree with Matt as colour blindness effects people different ways with different colours/tones so you can't consistently colour a site for all colour blind people can you? But yes it's important that your client is happy with it. Good job Blue and Orange go together :D

Have you heard of Synaesthesia? Was reading about this the other day, off topic but quite amazing. It's a mental link seeing words as colours, I'd not heard about it before.

Here's a link in New Scientist magazine about it... :up:
 
In reponse to Matt, when designing for the web it's infeasible to give every user the exact same experience. A web designer typically designs a site so the majority of users get the full experience and the minority get a "gracefully degraded" version. So, as far as colour goes, I admit that I don't design sites with the colour blind in mind (or people with bad monitors. or really old software)-- I just check to make sure that what they see will be acceptable (nothing invisible or terribly ugly). That colourblind filter that Harry posted is brilliant and it'll make it really easy to do a quick colourblindness test.
 
bfsoft said:
That colourblind filter that Harry posted is brilliant and it'll make it really easy to do a quick colourblindness test.
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The variations with the different types (colour filters) is really quite vast, are there any stats available to see which are the most common types?
 
Jon Hicks — a respectable designer — is actually color blind himself ;)
An explanation of colorblindness The Hickensian Hicksdesign

And personally, I don't really consider people with colorblindness when designing but I have seen a tool that takes your color scheme and alters the color to how people with different kinds of colorblindness see it. I'll need to look it up though.

EDIT: Okay I put something together here... All the colors are like 98% of the people see them. Now answer the question ;)

106xzsg.jpg
 
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