Rant: Tried a pattern overlay trick on a dashboard and it finally clicked for my red-green blind coworker

I work at a small software shop in Austin (about 12 of us) and last month our lead designer quit. I got stuck making a sales dashboard that used red and green bars for performance. My coworker Mike is red-green colorblind and kept misreading the chart. I tried bigger labels, different shades, nothing helped. Then I remembered a tip from a webinar (like 6 months ago) about adding diagonal line patterns to one of the colors. I put diagonal lines on the green bars and left the red bars solid. Mike said it was the first time he could tell them apart without squinting. Has anyone else found a pattern trick that actually works or is this just a lucky one-off?

2 comments

2 Comments

fiona_nelson5119d ago

You're making a good argument for patterns, but I'd push back on calling this a "clicked" solution. Patterns can actually create visual noise and make a dashboard look cluttered, especially if you have multiple data sets or a lot of bars on the screen. Most accessibility guidelines recommend sticking with high contrast colors or adding direct text labels instead, because patterns don't always work for everyone with color vision issues.

emma_ramirez18d ago

Wait, hold on - did you just say patterns can be worse for some folks with color vision issues? That’s wild, I honestly never would have thought of it that way.