I've previously written a pretty wide array of articles on using color in eLearning design. Part of that series covered designing for color blindness and compliance. I later shared another resource for assessing whether the colors you are using together have enough contrast. I've recently come across more resources for designing with various types of color blindness in mind that I'd like to share.
The first, which had mixed reviews, was covered by Gizmodo in an article called This Is What It's Like To Be Color Blind. The color blindness simulator mentioned in the article is by Etre and claims to show you how people with three different kinds of color blindness will see any image you upload to the site. Scrolling through the comments on the Gizmodo article unearthed several people with various forms of color blindness who reported that the images were inaccurate. My limited knowledge of how color blindness works makes me wonder if perhaps the images looked inaccurate because those with color blindness saw the images differently than those without it. I'd love to hear from any of our color blind readers as to what form of color blindness you have and how accurate you think this color simulator is.
Scrolling through those comments also led me to two other new-to-me resources for color blindness that will perhaps be new to you as well. The first is a download for Windows or Mac called Color Oracle that will show you in real time how what you're designing will look for someone with color blindness. I haven't used it yet, but this seems like a convenient time-saving tool. While the Etre color simulator requires you to upload a picture of something you've already designed, Color Oracle purports to do this as you work.
The second tool scrounged from the Gizmodo comments on designing for color blindness is called VisCheck and seems like a more usable form of the Etre simulator because you can either plug in a web page or upload an image to check the visibility of the three most common types of color blindness. The VisCheck site also has a tool called Daltonize which can correct uploaded images to make them more color blind-friendly.
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