Accessibility & Color Blindness

Hey everyone,

Popping in with a rather interesting question. I’ve recently added the google extension “I want to see like the colour blind” and it led me to explore color blindness. Is there anyone that knows what is the most common type of color blindness?

Anyone catering for that on their applications? I might need to star catering for that as I need to start using color bands for an Availability Checking feature. Experiencing color blindness according to that plugin made me realize that some shades can COMPLETELY get lost due to these conditions.

If you guys are catering for this, how do you go about it and what types do you take into consideration?

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Hey Brendin - this is a great question! There are a few different types of colorblindness. Deuteranomaly - reduced sensitivity to green - is the most common, affecting about 5% of the male population. All told, around 8% of males and 1% of females the world over have some form of colorblindness, meaning that almost 1 out of every 10 site visitors will suffer from this. This is the biggest argument I give about why sites need to put accessibility first - would you be willing to lose 10% of your customers with a design decision that is easily fixed? Probably not.

Plugins like this are great helpers to uncover colorblindess accessibility issues. In my class on UX Accessibility I host on Skillshare, I have a UX Accessibility Toolkit with some helpful links to review for colorblindness and other accessibility concerns. You can get access to the toolkit, the class, and 2 free months of Skillshare premium by signing up here: http://skl.sh/2BISYLj (forgive my shameless plug).

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Hey @dougcollins, thanks so much for your feedback man. I will definitely check out that link. Accessibility is something I’m exploring only now. Would love to actually be mindful when doing designs. I’ve briefly activated the Google extension and some of our app color choices gets all wonky.

Would you suggest I send out a survey in the company to try and uncover if our users suffer from these conditions? I have access to on-site users and some remote guys using our tool. Obviously letting them be anonymous. Good idea?

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Sending out a survey about disabilities is a difficult line to toe. I don’t know what the laws are like in South Africa, but in my neck of the woods asking for and collecting any sort of medically-related data is a nightmare, even if it’s anonymous. For that reason I’d probably say no, or at least advise you to run it by your legal department before you do so.

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@dougcollins, sure thing! in the meantime, that link of yours need to do the trick :smile:

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