More shameless self-promotion: Etre in print again! 22 Jan 2008

Yep, we've only gone and done it again! Snub Communications' Craig Grannell gives our colour blindness simulator a nod in his latest book, "The Essential Guide to CSS and HTML Web Design" (published by Friends of ED).

EGCHWD is a waffle-free guide to designing websites that are standards-compliant, usable, and more aesthetically-pleasing than...er...something that's very aesthetically-pleasing (Sorry, I overstretched myself with that last analogy). Anyway, Craig mentions our colour blindness simulator on page 349, describing it as a useful tool for weeding out common web design errors. If you haven't come across it before, it's a simple-to-use application that lets you upload an image and see how it looks to colour blind users.

Wondering what this has to do with web design? Well, roughly 1 in 20 people are affected by some form of colour blindness, which means that they don't see colours in the same way that other people do. Because designers don't usually think about this problem however, many images, documents and web pages are difficult for the colour blind to understand. We've seen many examples in our time, including colour-coded theatre plans that prevent colour blind people from finding their seats, and instructions to "click the green button to start and the red to stop" (which can be a bit tricky when you can't tell red from green!). As a result of these issues, the WorldWide Web Consortium's (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) requires that websites "ensure that all information conveyed with colour is also available without colour". And as the WAI forms the basis of the majority of global accessibility legislation, it's important that website owners comply with its guidelines.