7 Website Design Tips for Color Blind Users

Color plays an important role both in the real world and in the digital world. It is important to use colors not only to enhance the design of a website but also to inspire emotions.

You may already know that each color can evoke specific emotions. For instance, black is associated with elegance.

People with color blindness, however, may have difficulty distinguishing and guessing colors.

It is, therefore, crucial to optimize your website for impaired users and make it accessible to everyone to enlarge your audience and sales potential.

To that end, this article will provide you with some helpful tips for designing your website for color-blind users.

Also, if you prefer a ready-to-use template, we’ll provide you with a selection of some of the best TemplateMonster’s WordPress themes at the end of this post.

Let’s dive right in.

What is color blindness?

Color blindness refers to seeing colors differently than the average person. This is also known as color deficiency.

This impairment makes it difficult for them to distinguish and guess certain shades and colors, such as red, green, and blue.

The primary cause of color blindness is the absence of light-sensitive pigments in the cones of the eye

7 Tips for designing a better UX for color-blind users

This section will provide you with seven tips for designing a better UX for color-blind users that will increase conversions.

1.   Avoid certain combinations of colors

Colorblind individuals may have difficulty visualizing and identifying certain color combinations.

It is therefore prudent to avoid the following forbidden color combinations in order to prevent this from happening:

  • Red and green.
  • Green and brown.
  • Green and blue.
  • Blue and gray.
  • Blue and purple.
  • Green and gray.
  • Green and black.

Other than avoiding these color combinations, you can also make use of colors more effectively if you are familiar with the color-identifying system for color-blind people.

2.   Make it monochrome

It is obvious that the best way to design your website for colorblind individuals is to use just one color instead of a combination of colors.

It doesn’t mean to have a black-and-white website, but to use contrasting colors that even impaired people are able to clearly distinguish.

In Google Maps, for example, color-blind people can see the differences since it uses different hues, as well as green for no traffic and red for busy traffic, to allow color-blind people to distinguish between them.

monochrome

3.   Use high contrast

Even though color blind people cannot see the correct color, they can detect differences in brightness, saturation, and contrast.

Thus, you can leverage this to your advantage since many people afflicted with this condition do better with bright colors rather than dark ones, which have a tendency to blend together.

4.   Use thicker lines

A person with a mild case of color blindness can often distinguish a color if it appears in abundance.

Thus, a thin line of color with less than sufficient contrast won’t appear as the right color to them.

Instead, use texture. In infographics and maps, in particular, you can use texture alongside color to help distinguish objects.

5.   Use colors together with text, symbols, or icons

When designing a website, you shouldn’t just rely on colors as a communication tool. Instead, symbols and icons can assist in such a case, and they are also beneficial to people who are colorblind.

Despite the inability to see the color clearly, they can understand what the context or the action entails at a glance thanks to the visual representation.

As an alternative to symbols and icons, you can also include text with the color or image.

In this way, both impaired and normal people will be able to understand the type of color if they are confused or are unable to determine it.

6.   Adjust saturation and brightness

By adjusting the saturation and brightness of some of the colors on your website, you can optimize them for color blindness as well.

You can, for example, choose only one color or a limited number of colors and adjust some aspects of light, saturation, and hue to make your website more appealing.

Using this method, you can start with one color and create different variations of it.

A color-blind person would then perceive each sample of the color as an individual part of the design.

7.   Make links easy to spot

Links on a web page can be important, so it is important to ensure that they are easily visible and distinguishable for all users, including the visually impaired.

A color-based approach is not the best option in such a situation, as some people may not be able to tell it apart from normal text.

To emphasize the linked text, it should be underlined or accompanied by icons or symbols.

5 best accessible WordPress themes

In this section, you can find five of some of the best WordPress themes available on the web. They all present a professional design and are optimized for both users and search engines.

Monstroid2

wordpress theme

DETAILS | LIVE DEMO

Monstroid2 is a multipurpose accessible WordPress theme that embeds over 300+ pre-designed pages. It is easy to use and customize. Thus, you’ll be able to adapt to color-blind people easily.

Hazel

modern theme

DETAILS | LIVE DEMO

Hazel is a minimal WordPress theme that is ideal for people with color blindness issues. The design minimizes the use of colors and presents a neat and organized layout that clearly separates each section and element.

Techno

multipurpose wordpress theme

DETAILS | LIVE DEMO

Techno is another multipurpose WordPress theme designed specifically for IT solutions. It includes templates and pages that are fully customizable; you can change the colors, images, fonts, and more. It has all the tools you need to make your website more accessible.

Webion

modern business

DETAILS | LIVE DEMO

Another great accessible WordPress theme is Webion. Due to the black and white color scheme, color-blind individuals are less likely to misunderstand or have a poor user experience.

Meltony

business website

DETAILS | LIVE DEMO

Meltony is an accessible WordPress theme that makes minimal use of colors and separates each section logically, improving the usability for colorblind users.

Conclusions

Your website’s accessibility benefits you in many ways, including brand reputation and conversion rate.

We have listed some of the best tips for optimizing or designing your website for color-blind users in this article.

Although some of these strategies might seem complicated, they are actually fairly simple to use once you understand all the potential misunderstandings, and it only takes a little time and effort.

If you don’t want to start from scratch, you can consider using some ready-made templates listed in the article’s last section.

If you’re looking for other ready-to-use accessible templates, you can browse TemplateMonster‘s marketplace. You can find thousands of digital products designed by experts around the world there.

Author: JanusGP