Re: Color and colorblindness

[Geoff Lane <geoff -at- gjctech -dot- co -dot- uk>]

On Monday, September 28, 2009, Nancy Allison wrote;

> I thought it would also be interesting to see if any of you
> incorporate color blindness into your online documentation design
> (or print doc, for that matter).

I have a red/green colour vision abnormality, so I incorporate
allowances for abnormal colour vision in everything I do. FWIW, I
refuse to call the condition "colour blindness" because very few
people are truly colour blind (i.e. have monochromatic vision).

> But online . . . just wondering if anyone else has gone down this
> route and what you decided.

Remember that one in eight of all males and a lesser number of females
have abnormal colour vision. This is a significant proportion of the
population, so it's a good idea IMO to take steps to improve
accessibility of your docs for those with such a condition. It's quite
easy to achieve this since the "golden rules" are:
 * never use colour alone to impart information,
 * never use red, green, or blue on black or vice versa, and
 * avoid using similar tonal values next to each other.
WRT the last "rule", if it looks OK to you when converted to
greyscale, it should be OK.

HTH,

-- 
Geoff

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