Colour blindness research put into practice

This post concludes my research into colour blindness and the internet.  What an eye-opening (no pun intended!) journey it has been.  I have learnt about the importance of designing websites with accessibility in mind, the fact that it is illegal to not do this (which I did not know!) and the importance (and size) of this group of web users.  

I think as designers we get so caught up in the design and the client’s needs and wants that we forget about the end user and the fact that 1 in 10 web users has some form of disability.

I have designed a website with my target group in mind and have put it to the test with the colour blind web page filter.

You can view it here.

What is color blindness?

In my research on color blindness and the internet, I’ve been amazed as to the information and resources available on this subject.  Did you know that as a web designer, 1 in 12 visitors to your website are color blind?  Depending on your traffic of course, this could add up to thousands of visitors.  There are three main types of color blindness, each type is then broken down into subtypes which refers to sensitivity to a particular color or specific color section on the color spectrum.

The most common type of color blindness is Anomalous Trichromat Vision.  When designing for this group, it is important to avoid red and green color combinations as this group will not be able to tell these colors apart.  The same things goes for combinations with variations of red and green – which includes purple and orange.

Other key recommendations are the use of high contrasting color combinations like black and white, and the use of large clear fonts.

Adobe.com gets accessibility tick of approval

Creative software giant Adobe.com gets the website accessibility tick of approval according to All Web Design Blog, who applauds Adobe’s website for its monochromatic design. Interestingly enough, Adobe also has an Accessibility page on its website; when I clicked on this I found a link to their Accessibility Resource Centre. Check out their resources which include info on finding solutions to accessibility problems using Adobe products. Clever.