When planning and designing a logo or landing page, keep accessibility in mind and realize that some people will see it differently than you do.  1 in 12 men, and about 1 in 200 women – or about 4.5% of the world’s population – experience color blindness in some form. You want to make sure your content is readable by the widest audience.

Color blindness is the inability or decreased ability to see color, or perceive color differences, under normal lighting conditions.

Take a look at our Swift Trek logo above. Notice how someone views the logo on the right with color blindness. The green and orange are viewed as similar colors, while the blue still pops out. You want enough contrast to keep images and content readable. It’s a good idea to run your designs through a filter to find out how color-blind people actually view your logo, interface and web pages.

Testing your interface and design for contrast is quick and easy and good accessibility practice. There is software with capabilities to simulate this on your own computer. We use Color Oracle to take a quick peak. It’s an easy to use, free downloadable color blindness simulator for Window, Mac and Linux.

However, I discovered that the option is available in Photoshop under view > proof setup > color blindness. This allows designers to quickly check their work.