Commons:Creating accessible illustrations

This page gives advice to people who create illustrations (maps, graphs, diagrams, etc.) about how to design them in such a way to be accessible to people who may not have perfect vision.

Colour blind friendly palettes

The following palettes are colour-blind friendly, meaning that in a chart or diagram, people with colour blindness would still see these as separate colours.

The palette with grey:

#BBBBBB Grey

#E69F00 Orange

#56B4E9 Sky Blue

#009E73 Bluish Green

#F0E442 Yellow

#0072B2 Blue

#D55E00 Vermilion

#CC79A7 Reddish Purple

The palette with black:

#000000 Black

#E69F00 Orange

#56B4E9 Sky Blue

#009E73 Bluish Green

#F0E442 Yellow

#0072B2 Blue

#D55E00 Vermilion

#CC79A7 Reddish Purple

Tips

• Use redundant coding. This means don't use colour as the only way of distinguishing between items. Also use patterns or hatchings or different shapes.
• Use colours that contrast in hue as well as brightness.

Software

Colour blindness filter in GIMP

The GIMP is an open source, free image editing software for Windows, MacOS & Linux. It has a built-in colour-blindness filter, so that you can preview how your chart or diagram would appear to a colour-blind person. It can be activated from the menu View->Display filters. Click on the "Colour Deficient Vision" on the left window and then on the right-pointing arrow to make it active. By clicking again on the filter, which now is in the right (active) window, you can choose which of the three main types of colour blindness to simulate: Protanopia (insensitivity to red), Deyteranopia (insensitivity to green) or Tritanopia (insensitivity to blue).

External links

• How to make figures and presentations that are friendly to colour blind people
• Check if existing Commons image pages are colour-blind-friendly
• Colourblind colourlab – choose a colour palette, and then see it through a filter as a colourblind person would