I finally tested those colorblind simulators and they're not just a gimmick

For a long time I figured if I could see my design, it was fine. Last month I used the Color Oracle tool on a dashboard I made for a client. The status indicators, which were just green and red circles, turned into identical gray blobs in the simulation. A guy on my crew who is colorblind confirmed he couldn't tell them apart either. Now I always add a checkmark or an X icon next to the color. Has anyone else had a specific design fail a simulator check?

3 comments

3 Comments

milabutler2mo ago

But is it a huge deal in practice? Most colorblind people I know have developed their own workarounds for stuff like that. They might look at position or brightness instead. Adding icons is nice, but calling it a design fail seems a bit strong.

susanr152mo ago

Yeah, I read an article about this exact thing. It said calling it a "workaround" puts the burden on the user to fix a broken design. If a stop light only used color, a colorblind driver would have a real problem. They shouldn't have to guess based on position alone. The point of the simulator is to find those broken spots before the user does.

mark_fisher481mo ago

Last year I had a chart with blue and purple lines that looked totally different to me. The simulator showed them as basically the same shade of brown, which was a real eye opener lol. I started using different line styles, like dashes for one and dots for the other, on top of the color change. It only took an extra few minutes to set up and made the chart way clearer for everyone. The simulator caught what I would have just missed.