Color blind friendly software and apps.
Here I plan to list color blind friendly software and apps that can help or assist our lives. I have called these the color blind software champions. I am not going to list the various MacOS, Windows and Chrome browsers extension software available to assist in labelling colour or identifying colour across operating systems or browsers. I have already made these lists and these apps and software can be found below.
2: Windows OS colorblind software
3: Chrome Extensions for colorblind users
However, I am looking at everyday apps and software that are not specifically designed for color blind users, yet have some color blind friendly features built in. These could be tracking apps, art apps, productivity software etc, whatever they do, it is good to recognise the extra effort they have given to make their software accessible to us color deficient individuals. Examples of the kind of software you will find here is software that has, went above and beyond to create functionality that assists color deficient users. Software like Trello, Procreate, and more.
The reason why software companies do not design for the 1 in 12 who are color blind boggles my mind. If 1 in 12 of your users base can not use your software effectively, then your bottom line will suffer due to these user migrating to a better solution. So if your company or favorite’ software is not on the list time to switch. This is a passion project and I will update as regularly as I can.
Productivity Software
Trello Colorblind Friendly Mode
Trello is such an amazing app for organising ideas, it is super simple to use and navigate and works seamlessly in both browser and mobile app. Within Trello you can use colored labels to highlight, segment etc. The great thing about Trello is it has a color blind mode where each color is represented by a pattern. So, we can then use this pattern to identify and distinguish the labels. if only other software companies would adapt similar forward thinking ideas.
Trello
Example from my own Trello Board for this website. You can see the patterns on the left hand side of the colored labels.
Art Software
Procreate
Procreate is a app for the iPad. It is like photoshop for artists, using the apple pencil you can draw and color and create fantastical art pieces. I was instrumental in calling out Procreate in their forums for years, and then was asked to assist in testing the color labelling tool as they developed it. I am now happy to say that Procreate has a live color labelling feature, so when you pick a color from the color wheel, it will give you a real time color label, letting you know what color you are using. Hats off to Procreate for leaving big players like Adobe in the mud.
Below you can see in the top bar of the screen the words -“Cyan Blue”, letting users know that the centre of the circle, i.e the eye dropper is Cyan Blue.
