This blog entry will be a little different than my others; I will discuss a broader issue as opposed to a given user interface. I suffer from color deficiency myself and I think this issue doesn't get enough exposure as it should.
When designing a user interface, there are several factors from my experience and touched upon in this cited article [1], that could significantly improve the interface for color deficient people while not detracting from the experience for those who are not color deficient. These are: color selection, input forms, and links.
By definition of color deficiency, colors are difficult to identify for the color deficient. Being mindful of the colors that color deficient people have a hard time differentiating is key. It's as simple as typing in a google search to find out. If two colors look the same on an interface to someone with color deficiency, this could prevent them for using the interface all together which is severe. Building off of this, this applies especially so to input forms and links. All to often, I've seen links which were colored dark red. To me, these links appear black and look just like any other text would. I've spent tens of minutes just trying to figure out where to go next while this could have been prevented altogether if the link was blue. The same logic applies for input forms.
The fact of the matter is that user interfaces can be improved significantly for color deficient people with little to no effort. An increased awareness of this issue would go a long way.
Citation:
Silver, A. (2017, March 14). Accessibility: Improving The UX For Color-Blind Users – Smashing Magazine. Retrieved March 19, 2017, from https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2016/06/improving-ux-for-color-blind-users/
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