Technical Documentation for Color Blind
![ClickHelp Team](https://clickhelp.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/ClickHelp-Logo-Logo-only-Full-color-no-space@2x.png)
We strongly believe that technical documentation should be available for everyone regardless of their health condition. That is why we have decided to create a series on technical documentation inclusivity.
This article will explain the challenges colorblind people face when reading user manuals and ways to improve technical documentation to make it more accessible to them. The first part of this series is available in our blog by this link – Technical Documentation for People with Dyslexia.
Not all people know what color blindness is. What most people know for sure is that the colorblind can’t tell red from green, and this may cause problems when driving. In reality, it is much more complicated than this, although the red-green color deficiency is one of the most common forms of color blindness.
There are cone-shaped cells in the retina of the eye that contain color-detecting molecules. The three kinds of cones are responsible for detecting red, blue and green colors. Defects in these cones can lead to different types of color blindness. There are rare cases when people don’t see color at all. Physical damage to eyes can cause color vision deficiency, as well.
How widespread is this condition? According to National Eye Institute, 8% of men and 0.5% of women are color blind as far as the Northern Europe ancestry is concerned. This is a lot of people, and they are constantly experiencing difficulties in various areas of their lives, including reading user manuals.
Let’s see what we can do to make technical documentation more colorblind-friendly.
As we stated earlier, colorblind people can face certain difficulties with technical documentation connected with their vision deficiency. Here’s what technical writers can do to improve this situation:
Even though in most cases colors are not totally absent for colorblind people, they are subdued. And, this makes it harder to interpret such graphs. You can try adding texture to graphs to fix this:
These easy tips can make a huge difference for color blind people. We hope to raise awareness among technical writers with this post series and increase technical writing inclusivity as we believe that, still, a lot needs to be done here.
Good luck with your technical writing!
ClickHelp Team
Author, host and deliver documentation across platforms and devices
Get monthly digest on technical writing, UX and web design, overviews of useful free resources and much more.
"*" indicates required fields