Color Oracle: Design with Colour-Blindness in Mind

Few designers even think much beyond the initial design, color patterns, using the mixer and perhaps a pantone book, let alone think about accessibility for the visually impaired.

Mostly, when people think about accessibility and visual impairment they think of the blind, but this is not always the case, making your web site, print material or other digital output look good to people who are have milder visual impairment such as color-bliness should also be a consideration.

Colour-Blindness Statistics

I think we can let the figures speak for themselves when it comes to considering why it is worth designing a palette with visually impaired users in mind.

• 1 in 12 people have some sort of color deficiency. About 8% of men and 0.4% of women in the US.
• 0.38% of women are deuteranomalous (around 95% of all color deficient women).
• 0.005% of the population are totally colour blind.
• 0.003% of the population have tritanopia.
• Protanomaly occurs in about 1% of males.
• Deuteranomaly occurs in about 5% of males. It’s the most common color deficiency.
• Protanopia occurs in about 1% of males.
• Deuteranopia occurs in about 1% of males.

Source: http://www.iamcal.com/toys/colors/sources.php

Reaching Out To The Impaired with Color Oracle

Ok, so if color-blindess is so relevant, how do you go about taking it into consideration?

Well, Color Oracle is a handy application that operates system-wide in Mac OSX (it is in beta for Windows and Linux), as menu drop down. This means that it is “compatible with any design software and graphics application for that matter”.

Because of the way it integrates into the system, Color Oracle applies itself smoothly into your workflow. It’s as simple as selecting the type of color-blindness in the menu or pressing one of the keyboard shortcuts while you are working on a web site or graphic design, the app then automatically filters your screen, hiding itself when you press any key or click the mouse; and installing it is just the same as any application.

Conclusion: Simple and Effective

Accessibility and design for the visually impaired may well not be part of your workflow, whether designing web sites print material, online of desktop applications or more, but it is clear from my look at Color Oracle that integrating it as part of the process is actually very quick and easy. Really, there are no excuses and everyone should consider getting on board.

Find out more about Color Oracle and design for the visually impaired.