PSA: My nephew's traffic light worksheet at school was completely unreadable to him

He's in second grade. They had a 'stoplight' system for behavior, red for bad, yellow for warning, green for good. All the kids had to color it in. My nephew is red-green colorblind. He just sat there, confused. Teacher thought he was being difficult. I saw the worksheet when he brought it home. The circles were just outlines, no labels. He couldn't tell which was which. Found out from his mom that about 1 in 12 boys have some form of color vision deficiency. That's way more common than I thought. How many other basic things like this are we designing that just fail for them? What's a simple fix for something like a worksheet?

3 comments

3 Comments

betty_fisher51mo ago

Honestly, this happens way more than people realize. My cousin's kid had the same issue with a map in class. Tbh the teacher started adding little symbols inside the circles, like a check for green and an X for red. It's such an easy fix that helps everyone. Ngl it should just be standard practice to not rely only on color.

terry_mitchell15d ago

Wow, that actually makes a lot of sense. I used to think people were just being overly picky about color coding stuff, but hearing how symbols helped your cousin's kid really changed my mind. It's not like it's extra work or anything, just tracing a tiny mark inside a circle. Maps, charts, games, they all use color for no reason sometimes. I bet most teachers and designers just never think about it because it doesn't affect them. But it's such a small thing that could save a kid from feeling dumb or left out. Honestly, I'm kind of embarrassed I never considered it before.

miller.susan1mo ago

Yeah, I'm colorblind too and I once colored a whole stoplight wrong. Felt pretty silly.