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.

Are you colour blind?

Hello there – my name is Sarah Allan and I’m a web design student in Northern NSW, Australia. I have started this blog to document my research findings on the subject Designing Websites for the Colour Blind. This research is required for a college assignment.

Did you know that colour blindness affects males much more than females? Approximately 8% of males are affected by colour blindness while only about 0.4% of females are affected. In the US that equates to about 7% of the male population (or 10.5 million males).

Are you colour blind?  Take this colour blind test to find out.