Is your website color blind accessible?

Are you sure…?

In checking Twitter today, I ran across a troubling post from the usually hilarious “Clients from Hell” people.

The problem was that, as opposed to their normal satire and fictitious humor, today’s submission was very believable—so much so that it simply wasn’t funny.

It read:

“Excuse me, can you change that color? It doesn’t stand out from the rest, especially when you’re color blind. Trust me – I am.”

As color blindness is obviously a legitimate medical condition, where was the humor here?  

A comedic site not being funny is no crime, surely, and I honestly wondered if I was missing something. (I had skipped my daily caffeine/vitamin drip.)

But try as I might, I didn’t get it.

When I delved further into the comments, I realized that I wasn’t the only one at a loss. In fact, I found that there was a public outcry at this seemingly insensitive slight toward the color blind.

Can you truly be considered a “client from hell” if you simply want your website to be… accessible to color blind people like you?

This is less about a bad joke I read on a humor site than it is about YOU, dear Reader—and the users of your website, your marketing materials, your designs.

Are they accessible?

How to Tell if Your Website is Color-Blind Accessible

Fortunately, it’s easy.

Vischeck used to allow you to input any URL to see how that site would display to red-green and blue-yellow colorblind users. Unfortunately, that cool tool has been inoperative since 2012.

Instead, you can run Vischeck on individual image files, or download the free program to run the check from your computer, if you have more than a few images.

Colblindor is another free tool that allows you to upload multiple images and view them as through color-deficient eyes.

The Reveal

Really, the safest bet in making your website accessible to users with color-deficient vision is to ensure that your Web designer uses a high contrast color palette and keeps clickable links underlined.

Tip: At Excellent Presence, we always use a color palette colorblind users can interpret. See what other integral pieces are included with your company website or redesign by requesting a quick Web design quote.