13. Color blindness VS confusion

Color Blindness

When visualizing, use color to communicate information to our audience that might perceive colors differently than us. A few years ago there was a big media story about a blue dress causing confusion? People could not understand whether it was blue or black?

Color perception isn’t something most people think about often. It’s something that happens in the way it occurs.

Here are some interesting facts about the occurrence of color blindness in the wider population. These are things to pay attention to when designing effective dashboards.

• Eight percent of males are thought to have color blindness? Color blindness is most commonly due to? Genetics
• Red-green is the most common color sensation deficiency
• Color blindness affects ~8% of the male population and ~0.005% of the female population
• Sub Saharan Africans having been found to have the lowest % of color blindness

Here are some links you can explore to test for color blindness:

• Testing for color blindness
• Testing your own color blindness
• Color blindness
• NIH resource
• Color blindness awareness