“Being color blind stinks; everything is a color-coded pie chart, or Excel sheet, or line graph,” said Brooke Swanson in her article for The Cut. Color blindness isn't a rare condition — it affects more than 360 million people worldwide. That’s why understanding color blindness accessibility is a must for designers, developers, and content creators – especially once the European Accessibility Act (EAA) kicks in in June 2025.
In this guide, we'll explore practical strategies and learn how to design for color blindness. But first, let’s try to understand this disability better.
Understanding the types and impact of color blindness
Color blindness isn't about seeing the world in black and white – it's a complex way of experiencing color that affects millions of people worldwide. “This is not a condition that’s going to make me go blind,” says Brooke Swanson, and adds, “...but it’s something that affects my everyday life.”
When talking about blind design, we discuss how to create visual experiences that work for everyone, regardless of how they perceive color. So, what is color blindness in general terms?
What is color blindness, and how common is it?
Color blindness, more accurately called color vision deficiency (CVD), is a genetic condition where individuals struggle to perceive or differentiate certain colors. The impact is dramatically different across genders: 8% of men experience color blindness accessibility challenges, and only 0.5% of women have color vision deficiencies. This genetic variation means that for every 100 men, approximately 8 need a blind-friendly website to have a comfortable web experience.
This incurable genetic condition got its own signage. A color blind symbol, or ColorADD, created by Portuguese designer Miguel Neiva, is a system enabling colorblind people to identify colors using simple, memorable icons derived from basic color theory.
Even the best color-blind glasses don’t fully cover the needs of people with this condition, as there are many types associated with it.
Red-green color blindness
This is the most common type, not a complete absence of red or green, but a fascinating quirk of perception:
Deuteranomaly: Green subtly transforms, appearing more reddish
Protanomaly: Red loses its vibrancy, becoming muted and greenish
Protanopia/Deuteranopia: A complete inability to distinguish between red and green hues
This type creates a fascinating world where red and green become remarkably similar. The best way to imagine how the world looks like with this condition is a landscape where autumn leaves and green grass blend into an unexpected palette.
Blue-yellow color blindness
This less common variation creates a world where blues and yellows dance in a complex visual symphony. Imagine trying to distinguish between a bright yellow sunflower and a pale blue sky – challenging and intriguing. For individuals with this condition, color boundaries become wonderfully blurred:
Tritanomaly: Colors softly merge, creating a unique visual landscape
Tritanopia: Dramatic reduction in color clarity, transforming how bright and distinct colors appear
The color-blind settings for this type of vision reveal a world where color transitions become more nuanced and unexpected. However, they are much less extreme than the third type.
Complete color blindness
This rarest form of colorblind rainbow perception affects just 1 in 33,000 people. This condition transforms the world into a grayscale canvas, where vibrant hues dissolve into shades of gray. Imagine a photograph slowly fading to black and white – this is the constant visual experience for those with total color blindness.
By understanding these color blindness nuances, we can create a more comprehensive accessibility for color blindness that works for everyone. But before breaking down your inclusive strategy, let’s understand how color blindness affects online experiences.
Hidden challenges of color blindness in the digital world
Navigating digital content feels like walking through a minefield for individuals with color vision deficiency. Color blindness transforms seemingly simple digital interactions into complex challenges:
Completing an online form where error messages blend invisibly.
Online forms frequently use color as the primary error indicator. A field with an incorrect entry turns red, but for someone with red-green color blindness, that warning becomes completely indistinguishable. Without additional visual cues like icons or text, users are left guessing about their mistakes.
Interpreting data visualization where color segments look identical.
Charts, graphs, and infographics rely heavily on color coding. Colors that seem distinct to one person might appear identical to someone with color vision deficiency. A pie chart showing market share or a line graph tracking performance turn into an incomprehensible mess.
Navigating a website where important links and buttons lack distinction.
In web design, most links and buttons differ by color: unvisited links appear in blue, visited links turn purple, and call-to-action buttons use specific color highlights. When designing for color blindness, consider how users will experience it. You’ve probably seen dozens of banking sites where transaction buttons blend into the background or Shopify and WooCommerce stores where "Add to Cart" and "Remove" buttons look identical.
Playing games where colors are essential to the gameplay.
Colorblind gamers often encounter challenges distinguishing between certain colors in video games, impacting gameplay and overall enjoyment. For instance, a Reddit user shared their struggle with a puzzle game that relied heavily on color-coded clues, making it nearly impossible for them to progress without assistance.
“For me, it’s just a lifelong series of unnecessarily confusing interactions, demonstrating that the world wasn’t designed for people like me,” Andy Baio confessed to The Verge. And the word “design” isn’t a pun here, but something we can fix as designers. Only by understanding how color blind people see the world can we create more inclusive digital experiences for them. Now that we put ourselves into their shoes, let’s discover what it means to design for color blindness.
Color blind design: How to do it right
If you’re stuck with questions like “What are the best colors to use for color blind?” we’ve got you. And it’s more than just the color blind colors to avoid — we know actionable strategies that work. The great news is these strategies make your web product look better for everyone, not just people with this condition. Color blind mode isn't about limitation — it's about innovation.
Patterns and textures as visual communication
Traditional color-based design fails people with color blindness, creating invisible barriers in digital products. For users with color blind mode challenges, patterns become a critical language of communication. When designing charts, graphs, or interactive elements, incorporate these:
Crosshatched sections. For instance, financial reports could use diagonal lines for tech investments, wavy patterns for healthcare, and grid textures for real estate sectors.
Dotted backgrounds with varying dot densities to distinguish between different data points. A weather app could represent temperature ranges using sparse dots for cool temperatures and dense dots for heat waves.
Striped overlays using stripe width and orientation. An analytics dashboard might use thin vertical stripes for low metrics and broader horizontal stripes for high-performing segments.
Diagonal line variations with line angle and spacing. For instance, a stock market interface could represent bullish trends with upward diagonal lines and bearish trends with downward slants.
Checkered designs implement complex checkered patterns to provide immediate visual differentiation without relying solely on color.
These techniques ensure that information remains clear regardless of how a user perceives color. Textures transform visual communication from a color-dependent experience to a rich, multisensory interaction.
Symbols and color in combination
Color blind accessibility isn't about elimination, but adding extra layers of communication. By pairing colors with universal symbols, designers can improve:
Error messages: Beyond red backgrounds, incorporate exclamation mark icons with high-contrast borders.
Success indicators: Use checkmark symbols alongside green-like indicators.
Warning signals: Triangular alert icons with distinctive shading.
Information points: "i" symbols with unique textures and consistent placement.
As an example, a banking app where transaction statuses use not just color, but a combination of icons and subtle texture variations. A declined transaction features a red-adjacent background with a clear exclamation icon, while an approved transaction uses a green-adjacent background with a prominent checkmark.
As you see, symbols act as universal translators in the language of design, bridging perceptual gaps.
Text labels as universal translator
Text is the great equalizer for a color-blind-friendly website. When visual cues fail, words prevail. Descriptive, context-rich labels can transform potentially confusing visual experiences into crystal-clear interactions:
Button descriptions: "Confirm Payment" instead of a color-coded button.
Link texts: Descriptive, meaningful hyperlink descriptions.
You can go further to add the element of choice and include all users. Implement a "color blind mode" setting that allows users to customize their visual experience, demonstrating a genuine commitment to accessibility for color blindness. And don’t forget to perform a thorough user experience audit to ensure this switch and both modes function correctly.
Link design and dynamic shifts
The first rule for links is simple: underline every link unconditionally. This simple technique creates an immediate visual roadmap for users, transcending color perception limitations. For instance, in a blog layout, ensure links stand out with a consistent underline style that contrasts sharply with body text. Craft link text that communicates purpose beyond color:
Font styling: Use slightly different font weights.
Link descriptions: Ensure semantic meaning in link descriptions.
Underlined links
Dynamic interaction states are another important technique. Hover and focus states are your users’ navigational lifelines, showing them where they are at your website and what elements change as they move through it. Design interactive elements that provide clear, distinct feedback:
Color differentiation: Use texture changes alongside color shifts.
Focus indicators: Implement bold outlines during focus states.
Interactive signals: Create subtle animation cues that signal interactivity.
In the end, designing for usability is about clarity and communication. By underlining links, enhancing interaction feedback, and ensuring every design element speaks its purpose, you create an experience that’s intuitive and inclusive.
Contrast is key to perception
Contrast isn't merely about aesthetics; it's about survival and navigation. Andy Baio mentions the strategy for the color Wordle game released in 2021 uses: it comes with an accessible color blind mode, instantly making the colors discernible for his eye, as it conveys each Wordle color meaning with graphic indicators and more accessible hues. So here is what the contrast ratio mastery should look like:
Normal text: Requires a minimum 4.5:1 contrast ratio (and this is the main WCAG 2.1 requirement for color contrast).
Large text: Elements can utilize a 3:1 ratio for contrasting shades.
Better borders: Implement bold border treatments to reinforce visual boundaries
Separate clearly: Create visual separation through strategic shading and intensity variations
Tip: always test using grayscale filters to verify true visual separation. What is this grayscale verification about? Transform your design to black and white periodically. This reveals hidden contrast issues invisible to the color-enabled eye. The more contrast there is in black and white hues, the more the contrast between the similar and confusing colors will be.
Strategic color selection
Color differentiation is a critical approach to inclusive digital experiences. Understanding tritanopia color palette and other color blindness variations is crucial. Restrict your design palette to 3-4 colors that remain distinctly perceivable across various modes, ensuring maximum clarity for users with tritanopia, deuteranopia, and protanopia visual variations.
Understanding color perception across different types of color blindness requires a nuanced approach to color-blind-friendly colors. In general terms, a red green color scheme is the one to better ditch for every type of color blindness. But what other colors to avoid for each specific type?
Tritanopia color palette (blue-yellow color blindness):
Colors to avoid: Blue and yellow combinations, soft pastel blues, muted yellow-green shades, pale lavender tones.
Recommended colors: High-contrast reds, deep navy blues, bright orange, strong purple tones, high-luminance white, and gray variations.
Deuteranopia color palette (Green color blindness):
Colors to avoid: Green and red combinations, olive green, muddy brown tones, soft green-yellow hues.
Colors to avoid: Red and green combinations, muted red tones, brownish-red shades, soft pink variations.
Recommended colors: Bright blue, vibrant yellow, strong cyan, deep purple, high-contrast white, and gray.
By carefully selecting colors to avoid for color-blind users, you can create a truly blind-friendly website.
Minimalist design and visual hierarchy
Creating experiences that speak to every user requires a thoughtful approach to how your users perceive and interact with your product. The art of accessible design lies not in overwhelming users with a mess of colors, but in crafting a non-confusing visual language. Here’s how to use size, placement, and spatial relationships to emphasize key information concisely:
Spatial intelligence: Larger elements signal primary information
Semantic breaks: Strategic white space creates natural visual pause points
Be consistent: Consistent alignment guides user attention seamlessly
8 tools for a color blind friendly website
Living in the world of color-normal vision is tough. “The other day, I was booking a flight on Kayak… only after I opened up Chrome Dev Tools, changed the cheap fare colors to something I could actually see, I eventually booked my flight”, explains Andy Baio. Do you want your users to go through all this mess to be able to use your product? The truth is, they will most probably go and find a different provider. A frustrated user means a lost customer.
How to prevent it? Run automation testing when designing and iterating on the product. The color blindness accessibility checkers are your gateway to understanding nuanced visual experiences. Here’s a list of the most useful ones.
Color blind accessibility testing tools
Let’s start with the tools you can use to check if your design is accessible. The first one is the WebAIM Color Contrast Checker. Beyond simulation, the WebAIM Color Contrast Checker offers a precise scientific evaluation of color accessibility. By allowing you to input hex color values, this tool calculates exact contrast ratios and provides clear "Pass" or "Fail" ratings against established accessibility guidelines. It offers a user-friendly color picker interface and aligns with the WCAG requirements.
Color Oracle is also a powerful, free tool available for Windows, Mac, and Linux platforms. Its genius lies in providing immediate color blindness simulation without requiring image uploads or complex configurations. You can instantly see how your entire interface might appear to users with different color perception capabilities. And here’s more to love about it:
Provides a full-screen color vision simulation
Protects design privacy by processing everything locally
Supports various color blindness types
Another useful tool is Coblis by Colblindor. It’s a sophisticated online simulator offering comprehensive color vision deficiency simulations, local machine processing for design privacy, detailed image transformation capabilities, and representations for multiple types of color blindness.
To check contrast ratios and other accessibility features on a live website, use WAVE, which highlights problematic contrast elements directly in the browser. Last but not least, we recommend trying out the NoCoffee Vision Simulator. It offers instant, real-time glimpses into alternative visual experiences:
Simulate multiple color vision deficiencies
Overlay filters that reveal design challenges
Provide immediate, actionable insights without complex setups
And don’t forget: never rely on a single simulation tool — cross-reference multiple accessibility checkers and combine automated testing with user feedback for thorough evaluation.
Tools for creating color-blind-friendly design
Checking the design you’ve almost finished is not always the best practice. Usually, you need to check how accessible your design is in the process of creating and improving it. Here, various design tools and manual testing for inclusivity come in handy.
Let’s start with Adobe Photoshop — a premier integrated design tool with built-in color blindness simulation. You can instantly transform your work to simulate how users with Protanopia and Deuteranopia perceive it. Selecting "View > Proof Setup > Color Blindness," toggle between different color vision deficiency perspectives.
ChromeLens is quite useful for web designers. By overlaying different color blindness filters directly in the browser, you can see a website exactly as users see it. Here are some more of its pros:
Multiple color blindness simulation modes
Instant web page accessibility assessment
No external software installation required
And let’s not forget Figma! Its Color Blind plugin allows you to experience your designs through the eyes of 8 different types of color vision deficiencies. Just choose your design, and the plugin will create duplicates, modifying the colors to match how they appear to someone with each specific type of color blindness. Each altered version is neatly grouped and labeled according to the color blindness type it represents.
This is nothing new: industry giants are setting these standards already. How do well-known brands implement color blind accessibility guidelines?
Brands turning color blind design into art (and money)
Forward-thinking brands turn color blind design into a powerful marketing strategy. These companies understand that accessibility is about creating digital environments where every user feels genuinely seen and valued. The color-blind mode on iPhone was one of the first to appreciate perception diversity. Let's see how brands apply it in the e-commerce and travel industries.
Colorblind-friendly ecommerce brands
Glasses USA boasts rocking the principles of color blind friendly design, implementing an innovative accessibility panel that goes beyond traditional approaches. Their platform allows users to:
Dynamically adjust color schemes
Modify contrast levels
Customize visual experiences
By giving control directly to the user, Glasses USA transforms potential barriers into opportunities for personalized interaction.
As another example, Warby Parker takes their approach seriously tackling common accessibility pitfalls with a simple and elegant solution. When shopping for clothes, you simply cannot choose the right color on the color selection board in the item description, and if the name doesn’t state the color exactly, it’s an even greater problem. Here’s how they fix it:
Comprehensive color labeling
Visual and textual color representations
Touch-friendly color selection interfaces
Unlike many competitors who rely on problematic hover techniques or incomplete color swatches, Warby Parker creates a holistic selection experience. Their strategy ensures that color-blind users can easily navigate product options, traditional users enjoy seamless browsing, and touch device users have full functionality on their website.
Simple as that! Empathy to your users seems to be the only way to build a good online store designed for everyone. Now, how to do it in the travel domain?
Travel color blindness accessibility complying brands
Let’s start with the most known brand and its dedication to accessibility. The Booking.com logo stands out with a bold, blue hue that maintains high contrast against the predominantly white background. This color choice ensures excellent visibility for users with color vision deficiencies. Not only their logo, but the whole website is designed to show a max of 3 main colors — while, yellow, and blue, and they are bright and high-contrast as well.
Booking.com's web forms also show their commitment to accessibility. The site employs clear, text-based cues to guide users through the booking process. When an input field requires attention, the interface provides distinct visual indicators, such as red outlines and text indicators, that are perceptible to users with varying degrees of color vision.
Airbnb has taken an intriguing approach that sets it apart from traditional design practices. When Airbnb does employ hover-based visual effects, they do so in a thoughtful and varied manner. The platform utilizes a range of techniques, including:
Grey box overlays on hover
Text boxes that appear on hover
Subtle fade-out effects on non-hovered items
This diversity of hover styles helps to create visual contrast and guide users' attention, without relying solely on color or dramatic transformations. That said, there may be opportunities for Airbnb to further refine and expand its hover-based design elements. However, the clean, high-contrast colors of the website, and the bright, two-colored logo are other indicators of the brand’s inclusivity standard.
Your color blind design and web accessibility partner
COAX is a web development company that makes sure users interact with technology with no issues. Our approach to color blindness design goes beyond standard compliance. We combine design thinking and user-centered design to create interfaces that speak a universal language of clarity, contrast, and empathy.
Our ecommerce development team is passionate about breaking down digital barriers, so we've developed a revolutionary methodology for color blind design that transforms user interaction. By leveraging tools like grayscale testing, semantic design principles, and adaptive interaction states, we craft web experiences that are easy to use for anybody. Our travel website development services also integrate and deploy advanced techniques and comprehensive visual hierarchy optimization.
With EAA making its requirements stricter, you need a reliable partner to ensure color blindness accessibility. Contact us for a consultation: we look at your product through and through, find the shortest path to optimizing it, and implement all the changes — or design an inclusive solution from scratch, making the best use of your time and resources. Check our portfolio for more info.
Color blindness accessibility design: Where to start
Throughout this guide, we've explored how color vision deficiency affects millions of people worldwide, transforming seemingly simple interactions into complex challenges. By adopting techniques like high contrast, minimalist layouts, and strategic color selection, designers can break down invisible barriers and create websites, apps, and digital products that speak a universal language of clarity.
The best part? Making your design color blind-friendly doesn't just help those with color vision deficiencies — it improves the user experience for everyone. Whether you're a developer, designer, or business owner, you have the power to transform digital spaces into welcoming environments.
Brands like Airbnb and Warby Parker have already shown that empathy in design isn't just the right thing to do — it's also good business. So why not take the first step?
FAQ
What are the best colors for color blind people?
Best colors for color blind individuals typically include high-contrast options like blue and yellow. Designers should focus on creating clear visual distinctions that don't rely solely on color perception. Blue, yellow, and white tend to work well as primary design colors when considering color blind accessibility.
What colors to avoid for color blind users?
You'll want to avoid red and green combinations, which are particularly challenging for people with color vision deficiencies. Pastel shades and colors that appear very similar can create confusion. Designers should steer clear of color combinations that blend too closely together or lack sufficient contrast.
How do color blind people see the world?
Color blind people don't see the world in black and white, contrary to popular belief. Instead, they experience a different perception of color where certain shades can appear muted, muddy, or indistinguishable. The world looks slightly different, with some colors blending together or appearing less vibrant than they do to people with typical color vision.
What are the best colors for visually impaired individuals?
The best colors for visually impaired people are those with high contrast and clear boundaries. Bright, bold colors that stand out sharply against backgrounds work well. White, yellow, and blue are often recommended as they provide excellent visibility and can help individuals with various visual impairments distinguish between different elements more easily.
