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I recently met a pretty girl, who happened to be colorblind. It was not until I showed her a web design template that it struck to me of their difficulties. Obviously, I knew what is meant by being colorblind, but I guess I wasn’t giving enough weight to the condition as much as I should have. Anyway, now that I have experienced seeing difficulties of a color blind person, I guess it’s only fair that I spread awareness. So let’s explore the dos and don’ts you should consider when creating colorblind-friendly web design templates.

* The most common challenge faced by a colorblind person is the lack of distinction between green and red. So if you have a template which blends green and red at vital points such as a button or a banner then, it’s a good idea to change the color combination because for a colorblind person, the text will appear concealed by the background color. So try to avoid using red and green together.

* If green or red are ‘must have’ colors on your template; it is still possible. But you should bear in mind not to use only these colors to indicate something important on a web page. For example, if there’s a form which has compulsory fields, it is advisable not to write the text in red to indicate its importance. Instead, you could add a bullet.

* Just because there are various types of colorblindness affecting a lot of people in different ways, you should not throw off the choices lying within your infinite color palette. Don’t restrict yourself or discard any colors. Instead, make the best use of sensitive colors as red and green by combining with other neutral colors.

* Despite you being a freelance web designer or web designer working for a company, sometimes you may have very little choice over the color combinations that go in to web pages. If that is the case, suggest to your client/superiors to have an alternative web page for the colorblind. Spread awareness about the large masses of colorblind people surfing the internet and the importance of making their website accessible for these people.

* If you are blessed with a normal vision, it’s highly unlikely that you will know the impact colorblindness have on people, so I suggest you seek feedback from colorblind people about your web designs. You will never know the difficulties they’d have!

* Lastly, If any of your web pages include graphs, try to deviate from the norm of using red or green to indicate different conditions. You could instead use alternative colors like blue or yellow.