GUI design for color blindness

Question

Typically, colors are used to display the state of an element in a graphical interface: red, yellow, green, indicating error, warning, and OK (or something similar). However, 7-10% of men have difficulty distinguishing between red and green due to color blindness .

So far I have looked at the Color Scheme Designer , which imitates how people with different color blindnesses will perceive a set of colors, but I am interested to know how you approached this problem and how successful it was.

Answer 1

Found an interesting design fragment for color blindness .

One goal is never to rely solely on color. There is always another indicator (text, icons) for a specific task.

Answer 2

Do not depend on colors. You can also apply symbols (e.g. green tick, yellow triangle, red hexagon) or use text labels.

Answer 3

Use the "common" symbolic icons, as well as color to display statuses.

May be useful: Where can I find free software icons / images?

Answer 4

Many user interface designers start with black and white designs and then add color to an accent or underline, but only after the black and white design meets all of the design goals.

Answer 5

Please forgive necroposting, but if you absolutely must use color, I found colorbrewer2.org very useful - it has some interesting pre-generated color palettes that they classify as "color blindness is safe." Of course, as has been published, avoid color whenever possible.

Answer 6

Get any book on "accessibility" and you should have a lot of suggestions. They are more or less reduced to a simple principle: do not bind any information exclusively to color. That is, the color should simply accompany the information, which should never be transmitted only in color. I used Linux to develop one such application, and I used Compiz filters to simulate color blindness: very convenient. There are more types of color blindness as a side note, so pay attention to this.

Answer 7

The company I worked with hired a color blind designer Swing - me!

Answer 8

Do not use colorless operators. (Apparently, discrimination laws in a non-EU country, we sold software in this allowed, YMMV)