Create charting palettes that pass WCAG contrast guidelines with colors that can be differentiated from each other even with common forms of color blindness.
The Big Idea
One of my favorite customer quotes is that the existing pastel palette looks like “clown sprinkles”. What if we could create a better palette that’s also accessible?
The Challenge
There’s only so much “space” in the color wheel to differentiate colors, especially when taking color blindness into account.
The Result
I was able to create 12-color palettes that maximized color-blindness accessibility both for charts that use large blocks of color (e.g. bar) as well as line charts.
The Team
I was the sole designer on this project, but I couldn’t have done it without the scientific research-based open source tools to evaluate palettes.
The Lesson
Colors are very subjective, so while not everyone loved every palette, after they understood the process and methodology, they were sold on the result.
