Safe Web Colours
for colour-deficient vision

Colour is increasingly used these days to help convey information. When one in twelve men have some measurable degree of colour vision deficiency, the use of certain colours in certain ways can cause difficulty when navigating web pages or software, and even total illegibility in some cases.

The key issue is to know when you are using colours which some people will not be able to differentiate between - because that (for them) removes the benefit of using colour for visual cues. Colour scientists have long known which colours are confused by colour blind people, but this tends to be expressed in a way difficult for designers to utilise.

This site contains information and design tools. They may not show you exactly what dichromats see, but will help you to understand which colours are easily confused. This can help you to ensure that important colour cues are not lost.

• Background - a short background of colour vision deficiency (10.6k of images), common terms used here, and a brief explanation

• References - for a list of places I've found interesting and/or useful during the information-gathering stage.

• Related sites - links to related tools developed by other people.

• Palette files, Transforming, and Colour choice - these pages comprise the toolset.

• Colour lists

If you have any comments or questions about the information in our Safe Web Colours section, then please contact us.