Are Your Web Pages Color Sensitive?
Published: Feb 4, 2010Can you read the image that is displayed on this page? Are the colors correct for what the words say? If you’re color blind, chances are you can’t tell. According to most statistics, color blindness is a problem for 8 to 12% of males of European origin and about half a percent of females. For these people, the words in my picture appear to be almost the same color.
Color blindness is most commonly a lack of distinction between the colors red and green. It is not generally a lack of seeing all colors (this is extremely rare). It is usually inherited.
Color Blindness and Web Design
Most Web designers are used to having a palette of millions of colors to choose from when designing a Web page. And just because you want your page to be accessible to color blind people doesn’t mean that you have to limit that palette. All you have to do is think about the color combination’s that you use.
If you’re using colors to make distinctions, you should be aware that red and green can be hard for a color blind person to tell apart. Red and green are often used to indicate “stop” and “go” in US culture. However, if you use them in that way on your Web page, your purpose would be completely lost on a color blind person.
