My coworker proved me wrong about icon shapes for colorblind users

I always thought using different colors for icons was enough. Then my teammate Jen showed me her accessibility test results last Tuesday. She had 8 people with different types of colorblindness try our dashboard. Turns out 3 of them could not tell the green circle apart from the red circle at all. Jen suggested adding distinct shapes like squares and triangles to match each color. After we added shapes, those same 3 people completed the task 40% faster. Anyone else have a moment where a simple shape change made a big difference for your users?

2 comments

2 Comments

miller.paul2d ago

Heard similar stories from a few UX friends and it always comes back to the same thing. Color alone is basically a single point of failure for way more people than most designers realize. Makes me wonder how many dashboards and apps out there are quietly frustrating a chunk of their users without anyone noticing. Simple shape changes feel like such a cheap fix too, its wild more people dont default to it.

theabennett2d ago

yeah @miller.paul that's a solid point but I'd push back a little on the cheap fix thing. shapes are easy to add but you still gotta test them with actual users to make sure they make sense in context. just slapping a circle vs square on stuff without thinking about meaning can cause its own kind of confusion.