Choosing Web Colour Schemes for People with Colour Blindness

» biogardener - test of a good color scheme

I have studied color theory all my life because I paint. One of the best tests of a good color scheme is to print a page out in black and white. I have seen many Suite101 pages printed out that way, and they fail the test miserably. Some of the banners look like one solid color without text or graphics. Much of the text also disappears on the page because the tone of text and background are too close. There has to be more contrast in darkness for text to show.

Another problem at the Suite is the use of complementary colors side by side, in this case red and green. I am not color blind, but those two colors vie with each other causing extreme eye strain when my eyes try to separate them. Seeing that red/green is the most common color blindness, that combination should be banned from any design, because most blind people see those two colors as identical. One of my close friends has this problem. When he paints, he has a terrible time knowing whether something is red or green. He appears to see the reds as greens, because he never uses red in his paintings, but lots of green.

-- posted by biogardener

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