Topic: Accessibility Guidelines for Color Blindness?

I just wrote a widget to graph the accelerometer values, and I realize that it's great for me, but it may not be easy to use for some people because I heavily rely on the use of color to indicate the different values.  Are there are guidelines any of you can recommend so I can write graphical applications to make it easier for people with color blindness?

Thanks!

wayn3w

Re: Accessibility Guidelines for Color Blindness?

We don't have any particular guidelines - what's true for other devices applies equally to chumby.  Apple used to have an excellent document on the topic, but I can't locate it online.

There are lots of resources on the web for designing around users with color blindness.  In general, though, one should design so that color isn't the *only* way to distinguish elements.

For instance, TiVo uses red and green circles in their UI to distinguish between certain types of program recordings - this would be an issue with the most common form of color blindness (deuteranomaly).  However, the color isn't the only difference - the circles are also different sizes.

We at chumby tend to avoid color cues in our UIs, such as the Control Panel.  The few exceptions (alarm enabled) tend to be extreme or have some other graphical change besides color.

In your case, consider using different graphical elements for each type of data - different shapes for point values, different line thicknesses for lines or physical separation of the data.