Colour Independence

Design so that every piece of information conveyed by colour is also conveyed by something else — shape, text, pattern, position, or icon. 8% of men and 0.5% of women have colour vision deficiency. That's roughly 1 in 12 of your male users.

Core Principle

Colour can enhance meaning. Colour must never be the only carrier of meaning.

Common Failures

Status Indicators

• Bad: green dot = online, red dot = offline (colour only)
• Good: green dot + "Online" label, red dot + "Offline" label
• Better: green dot with tick + "Online", grey dot with x + "Offline"