Designing for Color Blindness

According to Color Blind Awareness 4.5% of the population are colorblind. However,  for male audiences this can increases to 8%.

There are many types of color blindness but it comes down to not seeing color clearly, getting colors mixed up, or not being able to differentiate between certain colors (Resource).

The different anomalous conditions are protanomaly, which is a reduced sensitivity to red light, deuteranomaly which is a reduced sensitivity to green light and is the most common form of color blindness and tritanomaly which is a reduced sensitivity to blue light and is extremely rare.

The effects of anomalous trichromatic vision can range from almost normal color perception to almost total absence of perception of the ‘faulty’ color.

You can read more about color blindness and designing for color blindness in Adee app free e-Books.

Designers often do not suffer from a color vision deficiency, so it is very hard for them to imagine how it looks like to be colorblind (see the example below from Canva online design website). A color blind simulator such as ADEE can close this gap for you at design stage and before coding.

Adee is a free testing tool that let you:

1) test color contrast based on WCAG guideline and modify your design if needed,

2) simulate eight different forms of color-blindness and

3) It also offers an in depth analysis of your accessibility compliance

4) share with your team!

As well as simulation, you should talk and get feedback from your real users and target audience you are designing for.