Old boss taught me about colorblind UX in 2018

Met an older designer at a conference in Austin. He pulled me aside after my talk. Pointed at my green and red error states on a dashboard mockup. Said 'you just lost 8% of your users right there.' Then he showed me how he uses patterns and icons instead. Still think about that conversation every time I design a form.

2 comments

2 Comments

simon_black7d ago

Got a buddy who runs a small web dev shop, same thing happened to him. He redesigned a whole checkout flow with just red and green indicators, then his client's blind user couldn't tell which fields were errors. Had to redo it all with text labels lol.

burns.brooke7d ago

Oh man, I gotta push back a little here. I think your buddy's real mistake wasn't using red and green, it was not including the text labels from the start. Color and text aren't either/or, you know? If he'd just slapped a little "error" or "success" label next to those colors from day one, his blind user would've been fine and the sighted user would've gotten the quick visual cue too. I see this all the time where people treat accessibility like a separate checklist instead of just baking it into the design process. A simple icon or a text indicator alongside the color would've solved the whole problem without a full redo.