Colour blindness – Why Designing For The Colour Blind Matters
There are over 300 million people around the world, right now, who are colour blind. 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women suffer with colour blindness. The most common cause is genetics, whereby the condition is inherited from a parent. However there are other causes too, you can become colour blind in later life, or as a result of an injury to your eyes or brain.
In this article we are going to spread more awareness of this condition, whilst also driving change in the industry. By considering their experience on your website, you as a business and Brand have a lot to gain.
Approximately 200,000 people in New Zealand, right now, are color blind.
What most people who are trichromatic don’t realise, these are people with ‘normal vision’, is that there are many different types of colour blindness. As a result, the needs of each person impacted by it are different.
Most colour blind people are able to see things as clearly as others, but they are unable to fully ‘see’ red, green or blue light.
Complete colour blindness is very rare, this is when an individual cannot see any colour at all and is known as Achromatopsia. Take a look at all the known types below:
The most common form of colour blindness is known as Red/Green colour blindness. This is when someone is unable to differentiate Reds and Greens. With a sensitivity to one colour more than the other.
Less Red but more Green is called Protan colour blindness. More Red and Less Green is called Deutan colour blindness. Blue-Yellow colour blindness is less common and known as Tritan colour blindness. It makes it hard to tell the difference between blue and green and between yellow and red.
Something that’s really important to note here is that just because they struggle to see those specific colours, doesn’t mean they see other colours correctly. These colours feature in many others, red for example is a primary colour, so it can cause considerable impact on a persons daily life.
A real-world example of this impact is shown below with the aid of some tulips and a pug, put yourself in their shoes for a moment:
It looks like a whole different world doesn’t it? Remember, 200,000 people in New Zealand right now have this condition – it’s a lot of people. These are people who can become your customers too, loyal and love what you offer, but only if they can see your Brand and connect with it.
One thing is for certain, if you make the effort and consider their experience – at the very least, they’ll appreciate you for trying.
This is when web design that understands their needs really matters and can make all the difference between an unhappy experience where they can’t see any buttons, navigate around or read any text. To a happy experience, whereby they navigate around your website with ease reading everything clearly as you intended.
Imagine the conversion potential, and the referrals, a happy experience could bring you.
Our website was designed for the colour blind and features contrasting colours throughout to be more easily seen, this includes the buttons and the menu too.
See our home page below with the same types of colour blindness used above as a direct comparison:
Normal Vision
Deuteranomaly Vision
Protanopia Vision
Tritanopia Vision
Everything is clearly legible and encouraging you to interact isn’t it? Even in low light conditions.
Consider how this design technique could apply to your website and extend the reach of your Brand around the world. It could make you the next success story.
Your next steps.
At VIEWFULE, we design websites with colour blindness in mind with all our web design packages. We do not charge extra for this service because we feel it’s the moral and ethical thing to do. But the good news is, if your website was designed elsewhere, we can review it and update it for a charge so you too can increase your Brands reach. So why not contact us for your FREE consultation and we’ll discuss through making your website and by extension, your Brand, colour blind friendly.
One last thing, if you would like to make a child’s Christmas extra special this year who is struggling with vision impairment, consider donating to Low Vision NZ. It’s a superb charity and they’ll really appreciate it. Thank you!
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