Colorblind
Accessibility
Manifesto
Accessibility
Manifesto
Before designing a website, or even making a small change to an existing one, ask if your design choices consider the needs of people with color blindness. Changing the button color on your website may seem insignificant, but it could make that website inaccessible to nearly 8% of men and 0.4% of women who have color blindness.
Can color really be enough to communicate your message? Color can be one element of a much larger picture, but don’t rely on color to serve as the only element of distinction.
Color-blind people can discern the difference between shapes far more easily than between colors. When you design with shapes, you won’t cause unnecessary additional effort for the people who visit your website.
Absolutely avoid identifying tasks or requests to the user only through color. Include other distinguishing characteristics like shape or size.
Switching the UI to black and white helps you evaluate the composition and the usability of your designs. Without the meaning provided by color, is your UI still working? Can you understand the meaning of every button?
Color alone does not convey information for everyone. Use shapes and icons that indicate a button’s function.
Don’t default to using green and red to communicate things like product availability or pass/fail. Using icons, text, and high contrast colors such as blue and red will help many (but not all) people with color blindess.
Relying on small, colored elements to signal important information, like updates or status, creates a huge barrier for color-blind people.
Dear data visualization designer, stop using hundreds of shades to present your data infographics. About 350 million users cannot benefit from it.
Although it may seem that color blind people are few, there are actually 350 million. 350 million people you’re closing the door on when you don’t make your site accessible.
