powerpoint presentation color blindness

Accessibility in PowerPoint: Presentations for people with colour blindness

• Written by: Olivia Kippax Jones
• Categories: PowerPoint design

Colour has always been powerful; from warning us which berries to avoid, to establishing iconic global brands. Many of us consider it a key tool when designing presentations – but what effect does this reliance on colour have on people with colour blindness?

This post is part of our mini-series on accessibility in PowerPoint. Check out the other post in the series: Presentations and Dyslexia

Colourblind Awareness say that people with colour blindness have “been forgotten in the race for progress in a digital world.” Though colour is an important tool, many designers don’t understand the needs of people with colour blindness. However, not understanding how to optimize your presentations for people with colour blindness could mean losing up to 10% of your audience before you even begin. To help you make your design more inclusive, we’re going to break down what exactly colour blindness is, before giving some practical tips to use in your slides.

Just want the practical tips? Click here to skip to the good stuff .

What is colour blindness and how does it affect people?

People with colour vision deficiency or CVD – commonly called colour blindness – find it difficult to distinguish between different colours. Complete colour blindness – being unable to see any colours at all – is very rare, but different types of CVD affect approximately 8% of men and 0.5% of women worldwide .

People are affected by CVD for a variety of reasons. It’s usually genetic but can also develop in adults as the result of health conditions, such as diabetes, multiple sclerosis and glaucoma. Colour blindness can also be a side effect of some medications, and it’s fairly common for people to find it more difficult to distinguish between colours as they get older. If you want to test your own colour perception try this online test.

As there are multiple types of CVD, and each affects sight differently, the effects of CVD on people’s day-to-day lives differ.  A few common problems are:

• Children finding it difficult when colours are used to help with learning or games
• Certain career paths, like becoming a pilot, being unavailable to those with CVD
• Struggling to know when meat is properly cooked or whether fruit is ripe
• Getting medications confused
• Having trouble understanding signs

Why should this affect presentation design?

Here at BrightCarbon, we are brave champions of the visual presentation. We encourage presentation creators to rid their slides of boring bullets and put effective, dynamic visuals in their place. But we also understand that without proper consideration, this is where problems can sneak in.

Though ever-advancing technology means that lots of smartphones and computers have specific settings to assist people with colour blindness, this doesn’t help when they are sitting in front of projected slides. Slides that rely too heavily on colour to tell their story could be leaving some of your audience behind.

This problem is common in data visualisations as colours are often used to highlight comparative data points. Here is what a typical pie chart could look like to people with different types of CVD.

The difference between the colours is much less clear, rendering the legend useless.

In this example, the colours green and red are used to show positive and negative results. This is really common colour coding, but red and green is one of the most troublesome colour combinations for people with colour blindness.

As you can see, to someone with CVD, the colours are indistinguishable.

Other colour combinations that can cause problems are green and brown, green and blue, blue and grey, blue and purple, green and grey, green and black, and light green and yellow.

Using coloured text and coloured backgrounds can also cause problems. Though we would never recommend using a slide like this with so much text ( Death-by-PowerPoint alert !), it is also totally useless for people with colour blindness.

How to optimise presentations for people with colour blindness

So, how to tackle this? One option is to simply use colour-blindness-friendly colour palettes. There are lots of resources online if you chose to go down this route.

Using a colour blindness-friendly palette means you can just pull slides together without having to check your colours every time. If you want to create your own colour blindness-friendly palette in PowerPoint, download our resource that will help you set custom colours and read our blog post on changing theme colours.

However, if you’re creating slides in a corporate setting it’s likely that you have limited colour options set by your branding department. In fact, you probably have a brand-compliant colour palette that you have to stick to. But there is no need to give up. There are three things you can do to optimize your presentations for people with colour blindness.

1. Contrast

CVD does not affect perception of colour value – the lightness or darkness of a colour – but the colour hue. Explaining hue can get a bit scientific ( check out this site for a detailed explanation ), but an easy way to think of hue is as a position on the colour wheel – colours in their purest form. What this means is that people with colour blindness can distinguish between light and dark colours, even if they both appear the same hue. When optimising your presentations for people with colour blindness, you can increase the contrast between colours to help make things stand out.

For example, in the red/green example earlier, we can change the brightness of the colours to help people distinguish between the two lines.  

Be sure to use more than just colours to tell your story. You can also employ patterns, shapes, text, positioning and hierarchy, and animation to create dynamic slides with a clear message. This is a great habit to get into anyway, as, if your presenting space has bad lighting or a dodgy projector, you might find the colours on your slides don’t look quite how they did on your laptop in the office. In that situation, it won’t just be those with CVD struggling to understand your slides!

We can sort out that pie chart by choosing colours with greater contrast and integrating the legend into the chart. We always recommend labelling your chart in this way as it makes the information quicker to process because your audience aren’t constantly looking back and forth.

Redundancy is a good way to safeguard against issues with colours. Use icons or other visual markers to make sure colour is not the only visual means of communicating your message, like with these simple symbols:

The most important thing you can do to ensure your use of colour is magical instead of miserable is to check that your slides are crystal clear when seen in greyscale. As we saw above, the difference between colours that have the same brightness can disappear when viewed by someone with colour blindness. When you convert your slides to monochrome you will be able to quickly tell whether your visuals make sense. 

This is very easy to do directly in PowerPoint. You can either go to View and then choose Greyscale about halfway along the ribbon, or you can go to File , click Print , then select Grayscale . You can then view your slides in the preview window. You could also use an online contrast analyser (like this one) for checking text on a background.

Realised you need to change the contrast on every text box? Or on every other shape? What a nightmare! Actually, it doesn’t have to be. Download our free PowerPoint add-in BrightSlide and use the Select Objects tool to edit multiple objects in seconds. Let’s look at an example. 

The contrast between the text and background on this slide is clearly not great! To use BrightSlide’s Select Objects tool and edit super speedily, click on one object then head to the BrightSlide tab , under Selection & Object , click Select Object and chose the appropriate formatting option from the drop down menu. In this example, you want to select the purple text boxes, so Fill Color is the appropriate formatting option. 

All the objects with the same fill color will be selected and you can go ahead and edit as usual. 

Now, this is just a simple slide but imagine how much time this tool could save you if you’re editing a more complex slide, like this world map!

If you’re interested in continuing to make your presentations more inclusive, then check out our post on PowerPoint presentations and dyslexia . We also have loads of general design advice to get you started on the path to PowerPoint greatness, like this post on creating effective presentations with the wow factor .  

References and further reading

Colour blind awareness

Coblis colour blindness simulator

Olivia Kippax Jones

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The Ultimate Guide to Accessible Presentation Design

As a presentation design agency, we understand the importance a good design holds in effectively reaching your audience.

There are many factors that feed into an effective PowerPoint design including hierarchy, color and image selection, and which font you decide to use.

Presentation design relies heavily on creating enticing visuals that get your message across. But for those who are visually impaired, enticing visuals may not be enough to provide an accessible presentation.

Why you should design your PowerPoint for accessibility

At the forefront of why we practice accessible design is the desire to have clients benefit fully from the presentations we create for them. A large part of being a presentation designer is knowing your audience and knowing how they are accessing your material.

PowerPoint presentations may be viewed by individuals on their personal devices, or they may be projected in large auditoriums for thousands of people. Presentation designs can easily be washed out from the light of the projector, fluorescent lights, or even natural sunlight shining into the room. Having an accessible design will make your presentation easier to see for all members of your audience, with or without visual impairments.

As presentation designers, we are responsible for staying up to date with current standards and regulations surrounding design accessibility. In recent years, tech companies have been sued for web designs that did not align with the accessibility standards set by the ADA .

In 2018, a class action lawsuit was filed against Apple for having a website that was inaccessible to the visually impaired, due to its incompatibility with screen readers. In the same year, Amazon was hit with a class action lawsuit for the same reason.  

At the beginning of 2019, Beyoncé’s company, Parkwood Entertainment, was sued on the grounds that their website was inaccessible to visually impaired users and was preventing them from being able to fully access the website.

Designing with accessible practices will allow more people to enjoy your content as well as protect you from avoidable legal ramifications.

Defining accessibility

When we mention accessible graphic design, we mean designing for people with color blindness, other visual impairments, such as low vision, and motor disabilities. Below is some information to keep in mind regarding how your designs will be experienced by those who have these disabilities.

Some notes on color blindness

People with color blindness are unable to distinguish between certain colors—these colors appear to look similar to each other and tend to blend together, rendering them indistinct.

There are three main types of color blindness, each with its own challenge:

• Red-green color blindness. This is the most common, affecting 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women . Those with this color blindness have difficulty distinguishing between reds and greens.
• Blue-yellow color blindness. Less than 1 in 10,000 people worldwide have this variety of color blindness, but it affects males and females equally. It presents as an inability to distinguish between blue and green, and red and yellow. In some cases, it can also make colors appear less vivid than they are.
• Monochromacy. This is complete color blindness and affects 1 in 100,000 people worldwide . With monochromacy, people cannot see color at all and are sometimes particularly sensitive to light.

Some notes on screen readers

For those with further visual impairments, such as low vision or tunnel vision, or individuals with motor impairments, screen readers are often used to navigate websites, read emails, go through presentations, fill out forms, and so on. Screen readers create an audio equivalent to visual material. This video shows how a screen reader reads a website.

How to design presentations for color blindness accessibility

In the case of PowerPoint presentations where sighted people may view the content on a slide all at once, screen readers voice out each item on the slide one at a time.

When we talk about creating accessible presentation designs, it can seem like we are separating our audience and creating one design for those with unaffected vision and a separate design for those who are colorblind or have other visual impairments—but this is not the case. Fortunately, many of the best practices for accessible presentation design are also the best practices for graphic design in general. The idea is that when you design for accessibility, you design for everyone. The list below highlights those design practices that are especially important for creating an accessible design.

Use the right color palette in your presentation design

When designing for clients, we are often given a set of guidelines that provides information on the branding and colors that their company uses to create their collateral. If you are not given brand guidelines to follow, you may need to come up with your own color palette for your presentation designs. Here are some important reminders on what to keep in mind as you plan what your presentations will look like.

How many colors should I use?

You will want to keep your presentation’s color palette as minimal as possible. A study from the University of Toronto showed that most people preferred simple color combinations that relied on only 2 or 3 colors.

Generally speaking, content is easier to understand if the audience does not have to interpret it through too many colors. Having one primary color with two supporting colors is a good place to start—many brand guidelines follow this format.

Which colors should I use for my design?

When selecting colors, whether from a brand guide or from scratch, it’s important to note how the colors you choose can influence your audience’s response to your presentation design. People are conditioned to attribute different meaning to different colors. Here is a brief look at what each color can mean for your presentation design.

• Red: Energy, passion, danger, love. Great for a presentation that is made to stand out or have a really large presence.
• Orange: Creativity, youth, enthusiasm. Orange is a good color to use for companies with a more youthful focus and want to do something a little bit different.
• Yellow: Happiness, hope, spontaneity, positivity. Good for use with companies that want to emphasize their efficiency, positivity, and lower costs.
• Green: Nature, growth, harmony, wealth, stability. Green is associated with both nature and money. It’s great to use for banks or companies that want to emphasize an eco-friendly message.
• Blue: Calm, trust, intelligence. Blue is often used for B2B brands and companies that set themselves up as hubs for information.
• Purple: Luxury, mystery, spirituality. Use purple to add a sense of prestige to your design.
• Pink: Femininity, playfulness, romance. Great for a company that wants to sell to a traditionally female audience.
• Brown: Wholesomeness, warmth, honesty. Brown is a good color to use for companies that want to point to a well-established heritage and sense of tradition.
• Black: Power, elegance, sophistication. Great for more luxurious brands.
• White: Purity, innocence, minimalism. White is often used as a secondary accent in a color scheme.
• Gray: Professionalism, formality, conventionality. If you are designing for a company that is more serious, gray will help you communicate authority and stability.
• Multicolor: Fun, diversity, optimism. Using an array of colors is a great way to show a company’s playfulness, and appeal to younger and more creative audiences.

When choosing a color palette, remember that red-green color blindness is quite common. If you have opted to use red or green, try not to pair it with the other color to avoid confusion. Below are some guidelines that will help you choose color combinations that will work for any audience.

The color wheel can help you choose your color combinations

When choosing your colors, the color wheel can be a great point of reference for what colors will work well together. Here is a short list of color schemes that traditionally complement each other.

Using the color wheel

• Complementary colors are any two colors that appear opposite from each other on the color wheel. Using a complementary color scheme will help make your design pop and create clear differentiation.
• Analogous colors are any three colors that appear side by side on the color wheel. In this type of color scheme, one color dominates, one color supports, and the last color accents. These combinations tend to be visually pleasing and effective in communicating different types of information.
• Triadic colors are any three colors that are equally spaced around the wheel. They create a bright and dynamic presentation, giving your presentation contrast and harmony at the same time. Red and green fall together easily with this type of combination. Keeping in mind the frequency of red-green color blindness, try to avoid combining these two colors where you can.

The best color schemes for readability tend to be complementary or analogous colors. Canva has a great color wheel that will help you choose the type of scheme you want, and experiment with different color combinations.

Proper color contrast makes your presentation design more accessible

Contrast is how well one color stands out against another. A common misconception is that contrast is created by the difference in colors—but the tone of the colors is what makes the real difference in being able to see each color clearly. Tone is how a color looks when you add a shade of gray to it, making the color less vibrant.

You might choose two vastly different colors and still find that they do not stand out from each other the way you had hoped. This is likely because they are the same tone. An easy way to test how well your colors contrast each other is to put them into grayscale.

Generally, you want to go for high contrasted elements in your design because that is the easiest to see. Light text on a dark background or dark text on a light background will appear more clearly than light text on a light background or a dark text on a dark background.

However, be careful not to oversaturate your designs with high contrast elements. If everything is highly contrasted, nothing stands out anymore. Contrast is best used to emphasize a point, such as a call to action, or a word or phrase that needs to stand out from the rest.

Low contrasts tend to be pleasing to the eye, but they impede the readability of text and the visibility of your graphics. The key here is to find balance between a beautiful color scheme and one that works for optimal clarity.

Since red-green color blindness is common, try to avoid this combination where you can. Some other combinations to be cautious with include: green and brown, green and blue, blue and gray, purple and blue, green and yellow, green and gray. These color combinations tend not to contrast well and it can be difficult to see a distinct difference between them, even for viewers without color blindness.

Contrast is especially important for text in a presentation. Text is an essential feature of any presentation, but it needs to be well contrasted against its background to be clearly legible to all audiences. Text is what provides the bulk of information in a presentation, so we want to make sure it doesn’t go undetected.

Besides contrast, our lead designers have some other tricks to emphasize text. One way is by giving the word or phrase being emphasized a different color from the rest of the text. Sometimes they will additionally place a thin box around the words to make it stand out even further.

When itemizing lists or outlining processes, it’s helpful to use numbers to indicate hierarchy and the order in which you want your audience to read.

Select photographs that are highly contrasted

Photographs are other graphics where you want to keep contrast in mind, especially if you will be overlaying text. Take the time to select photos with good contrast and try to avoid those with too much white if you already have lighter colors in your design palette. Light colors tend to get washed out by natural lighting, projector lights, and other environmental factors that tend to be beyond your control—accommodate for this in your design.

Use symbols for additional emphasis

It is important to not rely on color alone to convey your messages or be the focus of your design. Subtle changes or differences in color may go unnoticed by those with color blindness or other visual impairments.  Where possible, try to incorporate symbols to emphasize parts of the slide that need to be highlighted. This can mean underlining a word so that it stands out or putting a symbol next to the point you are currently focusing on. This helps guide your audience through each point as it is presented, and can help to minimize any confusion.

Include patterns and textures in your graphs

One of the most effective and accessible techniques for distinguishing between the different series within your graph is to use patterns in addition to colors. Using textures gives viewers an additional point of reference when comparing the cells of a graph with the graph’s respective legend. This way, even if the viewer finds the colors difficult to distinguish, the pattern will be a clear indication of what the graph is showing.

Additional resources for designing for color blindness

To ensure your presentation design is color accessible, there are resources you can use to see what your design would look like to someone with any type of color blindness.

• ‍ Color Oracle is a tool that will show you how your design appears to color blind viewers, as you design it.
• ‍ Color Review lets you check the contrast between two colors.
• ‍ Color Contrast Analyzer is a desktop tool that is available for download. It helps you determine the legibility of text and the visibility of visual elements.
• ‍ Color Shark is another quick way to check that the contrast between your colors is distinct enough to make for clear visibility and text readability.

How to design PowerPoint presentations to work with screen readers

When designing presentation decks that will be read by screen readers, the layout and order of objects on each slide are key to provide a meaningful experience to listeners.

Creating an appropriate layout for screen readers can be difficult to do, but it is very important to facilitate how the audience understands the information being presented. Layouts that are difficult to follow will result in screen readers doing a poor job of reading the slide, and consequently the listener will not gain any useful information. They will also miss out on the full experience of the presentation.

When screen readers read information out of order, listeners hear information that is not cohesive and consequently, carries little value or meaning. While screen reader users may not be able to see the design of your slides, the order of your content is still important to ensure a seamless progression through the content.

These tips will help you ensure your layouts are logical and compatible with how a screen reader will navigate through the content.

Organize content in a linear fashion

Screen readers go through each item on a slide from top to bottom, left to right. When organizing content on a slide, be sure that it flows linearly and logically. Put distinguishing information as early as possible in your slide so that listeners will know the key focus of the slide sooner. The most important information should be introduced as early as possible so that listeners know what each slide focuses on.

The Selection Pane in PowerPoint shows you the order in which a screen reader will navigate through your content. This can be found on the Home tab in the “Drawing” section; click on “Arrange” then “Selection Pane” to bring up the Selection side panel. Note that the screen reader will read this list of objects from the bottom to the top , so you want to make sure the title of the slide is at the bottom of this pane.

Another way to check if your slides are accessible to a screen reader is in the Review tab; click on “Check Accessibility”. This will point out which slides, and which items on those slides, are presenting an issue.

Writing alternative text for images

Alternative text (alt text) is what the screen reader reads to describe an image to the listener. It is also displayed in place of an image in case it cannot be loaded. Images that do not have alt text will either be ignored by screen readers or the image file name is read instead—either way, missing alt text often leaves users without useful pieces of information. If you have any images that are important for understanding the context of the slide, be sure to include alt text for each one.

Be descriptive

• Alt text should be clear and provide all the relevant information needed to understand what the image is. Here’s a good test for descriptiveness: close your eyes and have someone read the alt text to you. You should be able to picture a reasonably accurate version of the image and understand the key concept it conveys.

Keep it concise

• While it is important to be descriptive, your audience does not need unnecessary details. Additionally, most widely used screen readers cut off alt text at 125 characters. Focus on writing succinct alt text that sufficiently describes the image.

Identify the image’s purpose

• It is important to determine what purpose the image serves on your slide: is it informative or decorative?
• Alt text for informative images should not only describe the content of the image, but also make sense when read with its surrounding content.
• ‍ Decorative images exist on presentation slides for layout or aesthetic purposes and do not contain important information as it relates to the slide. For these images, you can leave out alt text—PowerPoint allows you to mark items as decorative so that screen readers know to ignore them.

Use proper punctuation

• Commas and periods in the alt text will cause the screen reader to ‘take a breath’, creating a more natural-sounding flow to the speech produced.

Use language that is appropriate to your audience

• Knowing your audience will help you discern which images need alt text and how complicated the text needs to be. If your slides are being shown to the general public, you should use layman terms and be as straightforward as possible. If your slides will be presented to industry professionals, you may use more technical descriptions that will provide additional meaning.

Creating alt text for grouped objects

There is a common misconception that grouped objects in PowerPoint do not need alt text, but this is not necessarily true.

When you have a heavily detailed graph, you will want to write alt text that explains the main takeaway. For example, if you are showing a company’s performance as it has increased over the last five years, you don’t need to write the statistics for every year—but you might write alt text that lets the audience know the graph shows an increase in sales over the last five years.

If you have a simple chart, you can write the data in the alt text as it concisely explains the chart's purpose. For example, a chart that shows 50% of customers prefer email contact and 50% prefer phone calls is straightforward but important nonetheless. Each piece of information is important on its own, so it is a good idea to include both stats in the alt text.

Writing alt text in PowerPoint

PowerPoint has an easy-to-use, built-in feature that allows you to add alt text for slide objects . You select the image, then right-click and select “Edit Alt Text”. Or, you can select the image and under the Picture Tools tab, select “Format” then “Alt Text”.

When marking items as a group, you will need to indicate that each of the individual aspects of the graph or image are decorative. In the alt text window in PowerPoint, you will have the option of setting decorative images. Click this option if you do not need to write alt text for the image.

If marking individual elements of a group, you can write text that easily explains what each element of the graph represents. Using the above example, if the section shows that 50% of people like emails, that is all you need to include in your alt text.

If the slide has text that already provides a sufficient description of the information presented in the chart or graph, you may not need to go in-depth with your alt text.

Design for people

While a large focus when writing alt text is for it to be screen reader friendly, do not lose sight of the fact that you are designing for the people in your audience. The photos used in your presentation should exhibit diversity, and that should carry over into the alt text.

Create hidden titles for “untitled” slides

In some cases, not all presentation slides need a designated title. Unfortunately, slides without titles will bring up an error message in PowerPoint. A workaround we use is to create a hidden title—simply put, it is a slide title that is moved outside of the slide workspace. It will be read by screen readers and will not appear during presentation show mode.

Since the title will be read by a screen reader, you want to provide a title that is informative to what the focus of the slide is.

Additional resources for screen reader accessibility

There are many resources available to help you understand how your designs will be interpreted by a screen reader. Since 2000, Windows comes with Microsoft Narrator pre-installed, which you can use to listen to how your PowerPoint presentation is designed and adjust for improved accessibility. The Mac equivalent is VoiceOver .

Designing for accessibility in all areas of life , should not feel any different from designing for any other audience. Adhering to good design practices and techniques will ensure that your designs are accessible and easy to follow, no matter who your audience is. If your company works with an external design agency , be sure to let them know that you want your designs to be considerate and accessible to all audiences. Stay up to date on ADA standards for design to ensure that you are protecting yourself and your company and creating slides that everyone can enjoy.

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PowerPoint: Increase visibility for colorblind viewers

Source:  Microsoft

Colorblindness affects a significant number of people, most often as an inability to distinguish between red and green, or seeing red and green differently. When creating presentations, it’s important to choose elements that increase visual contrast so viewers who cannot rely on color distinction can still understand what they’re seeing. Some things you can do when building a slide deck include:

• Avoid using orange, red, and green in your template and text.
• Use texture in graphs, instead of color, to highlight points of interest.
• Circle or use animation to highlight information, rather than relying on laser pointers or color.
• Keep the overall contrast in your presentation high.

To get an idea of how a person who is colorblind will see your presentation, you can check the contrast by doing the following:

On a PC in Microsoft PowerPoint 2010

• On the View tab, in the Color/Grayscale group, click Grayscale.
• On the Grayscale tab, click Grayscale to see what slides look like when flattened to just their level of contrast.

On a Mac in Microsoft PowerPoint 2011, you cannot preview in Greyscale, however, you can set your presentation’ theme colors to greyscale.

• On the Themes tab, in the Theme Options group, click Colors, then select Greyscale.

Are you colorblind and creating a presentation? Review “ Corrective lenses for the colorblind”  to learn how you can select colors in PowerPoint, even if you have trouble distinguishing them from each other.

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Slides for Color-Blind Audiences in PowerPoint

Test your PowerPoint slides for color-blind users, to see how they appear to them. We look at three known varieties of color-blind vision deficiencies.

Author: Geetesh Bajaj

Product/Version: PowerPoint

OS: Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X

Date Created: February 07, 2009 Last Updated: October 09, 2023

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Explore the difference between UPPERCASE and All Caps in PowerPoint.

Color blindness is some sort of color vision deficiency which results in differences in the way that an affected person sees and distinguishes various colors. It is mostly inherited, but can also be caused due to damage to the eye, nerve, or brain. There is no proven way to change these vision deficiencies. More information on color blindness can be found on the Wikipedia site.

Plenty of research has gone into making web pages more accessible for color-blind users. However, very little seems to have been done in the field of slides such as those created using Microsoft PowerPoint. When a color-blind user looks at a PowerPoint slide, he or she might view it differently than other people, as you'll see in Figure 1 later. Even two color-blind users may not see the same slide with the same vision. There are three known varieties of color-blind vision deficiencies:

• Deuteranope is a form of red/green color deficit
• Protanope is yet another form of red/green color deficit
• Tritanope is a rare blue/yellow color deficit

Figure 1 shows an original slide with three variations: one each for how a person affected with Deuteranope, Protanope, and Tritanope types of color vision deficits views the same slide. And of course, the first variation (top left) shows the original slide as it would be viewed by people who do not have color vision deficiencies.

If you think the contrast between the background and text colors in Figure 1 is not too bad, wait until you see Figure 2 , in which we changed the text color from white to red while leaving the background the same. You can see that the results leave a lot less to be desired, and the smaller text is either non-existent or unclear in this examples shown below.

If you see the contrast values in the slide samples within Figure 2 , you must have realized how important it is to make sure that your PowerPoint slide content has enough contrast so that it can be effectively viewed by those who have visual disabilities. It has been estimated that around 7% of men in the United States are color-blind. In Australia, the figure is higher at 8%. Comparatively, in both countries 0.4% of women are color-blind ( Source: Wikipedia ). Many more studies have been done on this subject.

Let us now show you how you can quickly make sure that all the slide content you create is suitable for color-blind audiences.

You'll need your presentation slides saved to a graphic file format like PNG, and have online access to the Internet. Follow these steps to get started:

• Open the presentation in PowerPoint, and choose a slide that has most of the colors you have used in the presentation placed next to each other. With this slide active, export it to a graphic file format like PNG.
• PowerPoint 2010 and newer users can choose File | Save As PowerPoint 2007 users can choose Office button | Save As | Other Formats. PowerPoint 2003 users (and users of previous versions) can choose File | Save As.
• You’ll see the Save As dialog box that you can see in Figure 3 . Choose PNG as the Save as type dropdown list, and click Save.

• PowerPoint shows the dialog box that you can see in Figure 4 , asking you if you want to export only the current slide, or all slides. At this point you can decide what works best for you: if this is a small presentation, you might want to export all slides. For larger presentations, just export the current slide and repeat the process for slides that are representative of the rest of the slides in the presentation.

• Thereafter, access the Vischeck site in your browser. A portion of that web page is shown in Figure 5 .

• Click the Browse button, and navigate to one of the PNG slides that you exported from within PowerPoint. Then choose one of the three color vision deficiencies, and click the Run Vischeck! button. Now wait a while for Vischeck to provide you with results.
• Soon, you'll see the results in the layout that you can see in Figure 6 . You can save the resulting image to your computer by right-clicking it and choosing Save Image As , Save Picture As , or a similar option.

• Repeat the process with the other color vision deficiencies, and any other PNG slides.
• Once you have worked with your slide samples, make changes in color and contrast as required so that it is accessible to all audiences including color-blind users.

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Pictures in Presentations

Is a picture is worth a thousand words? You probably have heard this adage so often that we decided not to repeat this phrase throughout this book! Now here’s some more info: the human brain uses a larger part of its area to store visual information rather than textual content. And that’s possibly because a picture describes so much more than text.

Go and get a copy of our Pictures in Presentations ebook.

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Making Your PowerPoint Accessible for the Visually Impaired

May 1, 2015 / Blog, Rick Enrico Blog Power Point Tips, Powerpoint, visual impaired

When you’re up on the stage, you may notice that the crowd isn’t paying attention to your PowerPoint.

They might not be satisfied with your delivery style and content. But what if this disengagement is because of its design?

Though you may have used a template that appeals to you, you might unknowingly be making it harder for people look at what you’re trying to present.

To get your message across, it’s imperative to engage the audience in your discussion.

We redesign PowerPoint presentations.

Get your free quote now., there’s more of them than you think.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), “[In 2015] 285 million people are estimated to be visually impaired worldwide—39 million are blind and 246 have low vision, which are caused by uncorrected refractive errors.” This means that your audience might be comprised of both people with normal vision and people with visual impairments.

Just because they’re not wearing prescription glasses doesn’t mean they’ve got perfect eyesight. Some people wear contact lenses or don’t even know they have a problem with their eyes.

Regardless of what corrective wear they’re using, an audience member’s visual impairment could be the reason they struggle to understand your presentation.

Common Visual Impairments

Low vision, color blindness, and dyslexia are three of the most common vision impairments.

For people with poor vision, objects appear out of focus whether they are near or far.

Color-defective people have a decreased ability to distinguish colors from others. Red and green are the most common colors that are hard to differentiate, while and blue and yellow are the least common.

People with a reading disability or dyslexia can take longer than others to identify colors, objects, or numbers.

This is what people with clear eyesight see versus what color-deficient people see:

If you’re new to making your design accessible to more people, don’t fret. Here are few basic guidelines:

How to Make Your Design More Accessible

Choose a readable font.

Managing your content’s font and size helps your audience read your slides from a distance. The World Blind Union (WBU) highly suggests using sans serif font types such as Helvetica, Arial, and Verdana. Unlike serif typefaces, these font styles don’t have small finishing strokes, which makes them more legible and readable for people with low vision and dyslexia.

When deciding what font size to use, consider what a comfortable viewing distance would be for a person seated across you—32-point is the ideal text size to use in most room settings. This is so that near-sighted people can understand what you’re pointing to, even from a distance.

Control Brightness and Contrast

Your template may have a vibrant and powerful look, but is it readable for your viewers?

Even if you painstakingly selected appealing colors for your PowerPoint, it’ll work against you if they’re virtually identical to each other. Using appropriate brightness and contrast is a great way to improve the readability of your slides.

Try employing a light background with dark text and graphics for your slides. This combination provides enough contrast that boosts the readability of your work for anybody who might have trouble distinguishing one color from another. When deciding on your color palette, always go for clarity instead of only visually appealing colors .

Limit Animations and Effects

Animations and effects might not sit well with visually impaired people, so keep them at a minimum.

Partially-sighted audiences wait for the text to stop moving before they can start reading it. Steer clear from moving text effects such as “Fly In,” “Bounce,” “Spiral,” or “Zoom.”

When it comes to choosing the appropriate effect, “Appear” suits most presentations because it’s the simplest and quickest animation.

Any effects that show one bullet point at a time are also good effects to consider. These help your viewers focus on specific points without getting overwhelmed by too much text on the screen all at once.

Preparing an effective PowerPoint is already a challenge. Preparing one for a visually impaired audience is even tougher.

Match your delivery technique with these design tips to provide a fully accessible presentation while leaving a great impact on your viewers.

Download free PowerPoint templates now.

Get professionally designed PowerPoint slides weekly.

References:

“ How To Make Visual Presentations Accessible To Audience Members With Print Impairments .” World Blind Union , 2012. Accessed March 24, 2015. “ Comfortable Viewing Distance for Text on Presentation Visuals .” Think Outside the Slide . n.d. Accessed March 24, 2015. “ Choosing the Right Colors for Your PowerPoint Design .” SlideGenius, Inc . June 3, 2014. Accessed March 24, 2015 “ Design 101: Basic Principles for Your PowerPoint Designs .” SlideGenius, Inc . July 31, 2014. Accessed March 24, 2015 “Visual Impairment And Blindness .” World Health Organization . August 2014. Accessed March 24, 2015.

Update: There are now 1.3 billion people living with some form of visual impairment worldwide. Thirty-six million are blind while 217 million people have mild to severe vision impairment. (2018)

Featured Image: Pixabay

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Home Blog Presentation Ideas Accessibility in Presentations: Making your Slides Accessible

Accessibility in Presentations: Making your Slides Accessible

Accessibility in web, print, and presentation design is of paramount importance. Approximately 2.2 billion people in the world have a near or distance vision impairment. An even larger number lives with other types of visual or cognitive dysfunctions. When delivering a presentation to an audience, you never know what type of people will attend. Some audience members may have dyslexia, color blindness, moderate or severe forms of vision impairments which can affect their ability to enjoy your presentation as much as others do. This post offers a walkthrough of web content accessibility guidelines and PowerPoint accessibility features that will help you design and deliver more inclusive presentations. 

Accessibility Definition 

Accessibility focuses on how a disabled person can access or benefit from a physical or digital object they interact with. 

Web accessibility, in particular, pertains to how people can interact with online materials, apps, and digital systems effectively. A huge body of website accessibility research is specifically dedicated to removing software usage barriers for people with different types of disabilities. 

What’s more, improving web accessibility is a global regulatory agenda. The US adopted the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) back in 1990. Three decades later, it remains an important regulatory mechanism for imposing compliance on digital service providers. Last year, over 2,285 ADA class-action suits were filed against businesses, who failed to create an inclusive environment. 

Globally, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) , introduced by World Wide Web Consortium, are used to ensure a greater degree of accessibility for web content and web experience. Specifically, these include guidelines for: 

• Adding support for voice-control systems
• Using transcripts and subtitles for content 
• Prioritizing convenient navigation that does not use color 
• Incorporating descriptive captions for images (alt texts) 

To ensure compliance with the above, a lot of free web accessibility tools were created such as Section508 test , AChecker accessibility checker , and MAGENTA among others. 

ADA accessibility guidelines also extend to presentation design . Since presentations are primarily digital mediums nowadays, making them easily accessible for different user groups is highly important. 

Benefits of Making Your Presentations Accessible

Some of the benefits of making your slides accessible are:

• Inclusion of audience members with special needs
• Ability to engage people who lack language fluency
• Improved perception of you as a speaker (and as company representative) 
• Supplementary materials such as transcripts or audio can be re-distributed through other channels
• Presentation transcripts also help improve the SEO of the website where they are published

Let’s see how to create accessible PowerPoint & Google Slides presentations.

How to Make Your Presentations More Accessible: Best Practices 

Accessibility is all about making your content more inclusive to diverse people, despite their physical or mental abilities. It doesn’t take long since PowerPoint includes a number of accessibility features. You just need to be a bit more mindful about your design choices to create accessible designs. 

Fonts can easily make or break the aesthetic appeal of the presentation. But far more importantly, a non-suitable font can prevent some audience members from benefiting from your slides. 

Here are some best practices for accessible PowerPoint fonts: 

• The best font size for a PowerPoint presentation is a minimum of 24 points . It’s okay to use a bigger typeface for headings and subheads to accentuate the important information. Likewise, go for a bigger size if you anticipate presenting in a big conference room. 
• Prioritize sans serif fonts. Sans serif fonts are those without small lines (serifs) at the ends of characters. Popular examples of sans serif fonts are Palatino, Georgia, Verdana, Tahoma, Arial, and Helvetica. Also, avoid handwritten and calligraphy-style fonts as these are the hardest to read for most people. 

• Do not use flickering, flashing, and animated text. Such animations may not land well with visually impaired people or those suffering from epilepsy. In most cases, flashing fonts also make your presentation look cluttered and amateurish.
• Use bold for emphasis. When you want to highlight an important idea, use bold styling over underline and/or italics . The latter change the letter shapes, making them less identifiable, and thus less readable.
• Mark the hyperlinks. A good accessibility practice is to mark all hyperlinks are marked properly with both color and underlying for color-blind people. Also, use descriptive hyperlink texts. Otherwise, people who use screen readers will struggle to understand where the link leads. 

Slide Texts 

Once you’ve settled on the fonts, you’d be itching to type some presentation texts. But before (and after) you do the writing, make sure that your accessible template has the following characteristics: 

• Use strong contrast between text and background. Contrast helps visually impaired people better distinguish the characters. Use PowerPoint accessibility checker to locate insufficient color contrasts on slides. Also, check recommended color contrast values for text by WCGA. 

• Go for simpler language. Don’t use jargon, industry-specific terms, acronyms, or catch-phrases. Most are not universally understood and some audience members may struggle to comprehend them. By using simpler language you are not “dumbing down” your copy — you make it more clear and concise. Add some more powerful words to make your texts more compelling. 
• Check your texts for logic flow. Screen readers typically stand the text elements of the slide in the order they were added to the slide. It may be different from the order in which they actually appear. So double-check that your text flow is correct. Also, try adding ScreenTips if you are using PowerPoint.
• Don’t bottom-align slide text. Why? Because that may hide some of the bottom texts from people sitting in the last rows if the seating is tiered. 
• Use captions and subtitles. Both can help audience members to better follow your delivery. Also, it’s easy to do since PowerPoint allows to automatically create real-time automatic captions for slides . 

Presentation Visuals

Finally, an accessible PowerPoint template also features images everyone can understand, interpret, relate to, and process. Remember: some of the people may not see your slides well. Hence, you may need to add some extra cues for them. 

Here are the essential accessibility practices for improving presentation visuals: 

• Limit the use of GIFs, flashy videos or, animated transitions. Likewise, avoid shifting colors, rotating icons, and moving borders. Abusing of animations, or using too many effects and flashes in your slides can create unnecessary clutter and worsen the reading experience. 
• Opt for texts over videos, when possible. If you absolutely must add a short video, ensure that the clip has good audio context for the listener to understand its content. As an alternative, add a slide note with a summary of the video clip.
• Include Alternative Texts (Alt Texts) for visuals. An ADA compliant PowerPoint presentation has to include alt texts for all images and other visual content. Alt texts can be processed by a screen reader, meaning people with visual impairments can better understand the featured information. Adding an alt text is easy. Right-click the graphic, select Format object , then click Alt Text pane, and provide a brief text description. The same approach works for Shapes. In the example below we can see how we configured the Alt Text for a human figure in the Health Check Dashboard template .

• Highlight diverse people on your slides. Our world is wonderfully diverse. So add use inclusive visuals featuring folks of different backgrounds, ethnicities, body shapes, and abilities. In fact, that’s what most people expect from you. According to a recent Getty poll , 80% of consumers believe that businesses should show more ethnic diversity in their advertising.
• Avoid complex charts or tables. These are often hard to process for screen reading software and audience members with cognitive issues. Thus, make your graphics as simple as possible. Be careful while using SVG format. SVGs are great as they give a lot of flexibility for designing the slides and including graphics in your presentations at a minimum file size, but the format lacks semantics for expressing structures like bar charts, tables, scattered plots, etc. The above makes the content difficult to parse by a screen reader. 

Presentation Delivery

When the big day of the public speech comes, don’t let your accessibility design efforts go to waste by sabotaging the delivery. Remember: accessibility is about creating an inclusive experience, not just objects. Respectively, you’ll need to adjust your delivery too. Here’s how: 

Before starting the presentation, ask if there are any people with special needs in the audience. That’s a simple gesture of courtesy that goes a long way. If you see some raised hands, ask how you could adjust your speech for the person’s comfort. 

Overall, speak slowly and distinctively. Use simpler language when you can, mimicking the terms you are using in the presentation copy. Don’t overload your slides with text and instead use voice to communicate and explain extra concepts. Give enough time for the audience to read the slides. Make timely pauses, allowing people to catch up with reading and processing your main points. 

Keep your language more inclusive overall. Use “they” as your main pronoun when making a generalization, instead of masculine pronoun (e.g., he), or the awkward “she/he” combo. Likewise, use plural noun forms (e.g. people, workers, employees) over terms marked for masculine (e.g. foreman, fireman, etc). 

When you want to introduce a hero to your story, for example, as part of a case study , go for a “gender-neutral” name such as Alex, Dana, Kim to avoid stereotyping either males or females. By all means, avoid blanket, generalistic statements in your presentation such as “Women are better cooks” or “Asians are good in STEM”. This may alienate some audience members. The Linguistic Society has a great set of guidelines for inclusive language. 

Finally, consider making your slides available in other formats. While accessibility in PowerPoint is rather great, converting your slides to another format such as PDF, HTML, mp3 audio, or another type of word processing document is another great step for ensuring that more people can access your content after a live delivery.

To Conclude: Go for an ADA Compliant PowerPoint Template 

Designing accessible presentations requires some effort. Making your presentations accessible means you’re considering all disabilities. If you are not sure that you’ve got all the aspects of PowerPoint ADA compliance right, consider using a premade accessible template. Accessible PowerPoint templates are fully optimized for use by people with visual impairments and other types of special needs. By opting for such a solution, you won’t have to worry about the design intricacies and have more time to hone your delivery! 

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Accessibility, ADA, Diversity, Inclusivity, Presentation Tips, WCAG Filed under Presentation Ideas

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Learn how we can elevate the quality of our speech by introducing presentation aids. A detailed guide explaining each type, tactics and more.

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• Create slides with an accessible reading order Video
• Improve image accessibility in PowerPoint Video
• Use accessible colors and styles in slides Video
• Design slides for people with dyslexia Video
• Save a presentation in a different format Video
• Present inclusively Video

Use accessible colors and styles in slides

The colors and styles you use for slides, text, charts, and graphics go a long way toward improving accessibility in PowerPoint presentations. Using an accessible template is a good starting point.

Use an accessible template

In PowerPoint, you can search for and use pre-defined accessible templates.

Open PowerPoint.

Note:  If PowerPoint is already open, go to File > New .

Type accessible templates in the search text field.

To see information about an accessible template, select it.

To open a new presentation based on the selected template, select Create .

To see other color, style, and font options, browse the PowerPoint themes. On the Design tab, expand the Themes menu and select a theme that suits your purposes.

Tips for accessible color and style choices in PowerPoint

Off-white backgrounds are better for people with perceptual differences, like dyslexia.

Select templates and themes with sans serif fonts that are 18 points or larger.

Look for solid backgrounds with contrasting text color.

To make information more accessible, differentiate it in more than one way. In the image below, both color and text differentiate information:

Make your PowerPoint presentations accessible to people with disabilities

Download free, pre-built templates

Save a file

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PowerPoint is great for creating slide shows for work, school, or for an event. You can even use it to create handouts

PowerPoint is primarily visual, often displayed at a distance from the audience. However, you can make your PowerPoint slides more accessible by following a few best practices.

PowerPoint comes with a large collection of accessible templates. These can save you lots of time.

I can click on any one of these, and it opens with information about when to use this template.

This one, for example, says it works especially well for students or teachers

I can click the Create button to have PowerPoint set things up. Then it opens a slide deck ready for me to enter my information

This template has a lot of choices for me

This template already has accessible color choices, but I could browse just to see what else is there, in the Themes.

A Theme is a preset collection of colors and fonts. Accessible templates already have the right colors for contrast and have simple, easy-to-read fonts.

Choose the Design tab and now you have lots of options to choose from.

One reason I picked this template is that I like the off white background. This is important for people with perceptual differences like dyslexia.

For some of those people, too much stark contrast just makes words look distorted and kind of swim together.

Color choice is important too. About 15% of people are color blind and can’t see the difference between certain colors. The most common form of color blindness is Red/Green,

To make color more accessible, add information in another form, don’t rely on color alone. Use color and text, color and shape, and so on.

That gets my slide deck off to a good start.

For more about creating accessible documents, go to aka.ms/officeAccessibility

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The PowerPoint Blog

Color blindness indepth.

For presentations there is a lot of talk about designing with color blindness in mind. But how much do we know, and understand, color blindness?

[videopack id=”15216″]https://thepowerpointblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Rotating-Color-Dots.mp4[/videopack]

I found a nice overview article of color blindness that explains what it is, the types of color blindness (there are 5) and more – all in simple language making it a quick read that I found easy to understand. So, sharing an online resource I found that should be of interest to anyone looking at their slides through the color-blind view.

Article is here .

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Day 11: use color contrast in powerpoint.

• Take the 21 day challenge!

Design a short PowerPoint presentation with accessible color contrast to enhance readability for everyone, especially people with color blindness. (About 300 million people globally have color vision deficiency!)

To investigate and improve color ratios, use the Microsoft Color Contrast Analyzer within the Accessibility Checker. Large, bolded text needs a color contrast of at least 3.0 and small text requires a contrast of at least 4.5 to pass the color contrast test.

Check if your content passes this accessibility test by following these steps in PowerPoint:

• Navigate to the “Review” tab. 
• Select the option to “Check Accessibility.”
• The “Accessibility Pane” will open to the right.
• Within the “Accessibility Pane,” navigate to the list of “Inspection Results.”
• Look for a “Warnings” item in the list of “Inspection Results.”
• If the “Warnings” item is present, click its arrow button to swing out the results. 
• Look for “Hard to read text contrast.”
• If present, click the “Hard to read text contrast” arrow button to show a list of slides that need attention, as per the two example slides further down this page.

Note: The color contrast analyzer tests only text objects with a fill color applied to them. Text objects that are placed over separate images or shapes will not be tested. In these scenarios, contrast levels should be tested manually by saving screenshots and using the following hyperlinked online tool: Color Check for ADA Image Compliance .

Most color contrast errors can be solved by simply enlarging the text in question or changing the fill color to be lighter or darker, depending on text color.

To help mitigate color contrast errors, follow these best practices:

• Try to refrain from placing text over images.
• Avoid using color for body copy text.
• Resist applying a fill color on text objects.

Let us know what you learned today by posting on social media with #ABD21DayChallenge and #AccessibleByDesign.

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Once we have received your email address, we will send you the Commitment to review and return to us to indicate your intention to work towards making communications accessible for all.

• Presentation

How have a good presentation for color blind people?

• December 12, 2022

Inclusivity is at the forefront of design considerations in today’s diverse world. When crafting presentations, it’s crucial to ensure your content is accessible to everyone, including those with color vision deficiencies. This article delves into blind presentation, what is color blind presentation, the importance of Presentation design services for color-blind individuals, strategies to create color-blind friendly palette PowerPoint, examples of effective and ineffective color charts, and the best colors for color-blind presentations.

Table of Contents

What is Color Blindness and How Does It Happen?

When you are unable to see colors properly, called color blindness or color vision deficit, it is also known as color blindness. This condition is also called color blindness. It is when a person cannot differentiate between certain colors. This is usually between reds and greens, but occasionally it can also occur in blues.

Two types of retina cells can detect light. These cells are known as rods and cones. They are located near the center of your eyes and detect color. There are three types of cones that see color: blue, green and red. These cone cells provide input to the brain that determines our perception of color. You can develop color blindness later in life, although it is more common to be born with. A more serious condition can be indicated by a change in your color vision. An ophthalmologist should be consulted if there is a marked change in color perception.

Why is color important for data visualization?

Data visualization is a key factor because it helps you highlight important information and encourages information recall. Different color‘s can be used to separate and delineate different data points in a visualization, so viewers can clearly see significant differences or similarities. You can also use it to stimulate emotions through color psychology.

Understanding Color Blindness and Color Perception

Color blindness, AKA known as color vision deficiency, is a situation that influences an individual’s capability to distinguish between particular colors. The most common is red-green color blindness, followed by blue-yellow color blindness. Some color-blind people can still discover colors to some extent but may struggle with particular color combinations.

Designing Color Blind Friendly Palettes PowerPoint

For your blind presentation, you should consider the following factors:

• Use High Contrast: Opt for high contrast between text and background colors. A light color on a dark background or vice versa ensures legibility for all users.
• Avoid Color Coding Alone: Refrain from relying solely on color to convey information. Include labels, symbols, or patterns that provide context and clarity.
• Test with Simulators: Utilize online color-blindness simulators to preview how your content appears to color-blind users. This helps you identify potential issues before finalizing your presentation.

Good and Bad color blind friendly palette PowerPoint example

Here are some examples of color-blind friendly palette PowerPoint to understand it better:

Good Example:

• A color chart that utilizes both color and pattern differentiation. For instance, a bar graph with different hatch patterns for each bar along with distinct colors.

Bad Example:

• A color chart that solely uses different shades of red and green to differentiate data points. This is problematic for red-green color blind individuals who might struggle to distinguish between the two.

Best Colors for Color Blind Presentations

High contrast combinations:.

• Black text on a white background or vice versa.
• Dark blue on a light yellow background.
• Dark green on a light pink background.

Utilize Universal Colors:

• Blue is generally well-perceived by most individuals, making it a safe choice for text, headers, and accents.
• Yellow color can highlight important information as it’s distinct from the most common color blindness deficiencies.

Pairing Colors:

• Using color-coded data, ensure that the colors chosen are distinguishable by using high-contrast combinations.

Avoid Red-Green Pairings:

• Avoid pairing red and green together, as these colors are challenging for red-green color blind individuals.

How do you design charts using a color-blind-friendly palette?

You should plan your color scheme in advance, and be aware of the best colors for color-blind presentations. This will help you avoid making your infographics or charts inaccessible for color-blind users.

1-Avoid color combinations for color-blind users:

• Red and green
• Green and brown
• Blue & green
• Blue and gray
• Blue and purple
• Green and gray
• Green and black

You can adjust the colors so that one color is extremely dark and the other very light. This will allow you to create contrast.

2-Adding shapes

To outline different content types, you need to use different sizes and shapes. Color blind people reported difficulty seeing the differences between the two colors because they blur together. They did however note that high contrast and thick lines could help them distinguish. To ensure that your content is easily readable, increase the contrast and thicken lines to at least 2px.

3-Design your color scheme

It is strongly recommended that you use a consistent color scheme for all content if you are creating a color palette that appeals to color-blind audiences. It is important to keep your brand and project colors consistent. You should choose the right colors to reflect your brand and use them throughout your visuals. You don’t have to compromise the aesthetics of your brand by designing a colorblind-friendly palette.

4-Add symbols and text labels

Make text labels descriptive and prominent by using them. These labels will help users with normal vision to lessen the strain on their eyes.

Icons and symbols are great for making your designs more accessible. They visually punctuate a message, without having to rely on color.

Last, but not least: Always underline hyperlinks and never underline regular text. To make your content easier to read, hyperlinks should be the same color as the text and highlighted. Users with similar vision will notice these hyperlinks faster.

5-Different shapes, patterns, textures, and labels are possible

Consider the best color blind friendly palette PowerPoint. It is best to use one color to distinguish the data series so that everyone can understand your plot. This design ensures that all colorblind readers can understand the plotted data regardless of their particular circumstances. The chart will remain clear even if printed in black and white (no gray shades).

6-Use high-contrast colors

Most people who are colorblind don’t have to worry about contrast. To make the contrast stronger, you can change the hues of your colors. You can play with different hues and levels of saturation.

Designing blind presentations that are accessible to color-blind audiences is a crucial step toward inclusivity. By understanding the limitations of color vision deficiencies and employing strategies to create a color blind friendly palette PowerPoint, you ensure that all can comprehend your content. Remember to consider the best colors for color-blind presentations and use high contrast, avoid relying solely on color coding, and test your designs using color-blindness simulators. Choosing high-contrast combinations, universal colors like blue and yellow, and avoiding problematic pairings will enhance the accessibility and effectiveness of your presentations. Ultimately, an inclusive design approach not only benefits color-blind individuals but also enhances the overall quality and impact of your presentations for everyone.

How to know presentations are friendly to color blind people?

Some alternative two-tone color mixtures include green/magenta, yellow/blue, and red/cyan. Even better, only use multiple colors when necessary. You can convey most data just as well using black/white, greyscale, or a monochromatic color scale, so don’t use two colors solely to make your data “pretty.”

What color is easiest for colorblind people?

Note that blue is the color most examined for normal people and readers with red-/green-blindness (the most common type of colorblindness). “Blue is the safest shade.” Choose blue if you want red- and green-blind readers to perceive color as you do.

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Eye Diseases: Color Blindness

Eye diseases: color blindness presentation, free google slides theme and powerpoint template.

This professional medical presentation template is perfect for providing information about eye diseases, such as color blindness. It comes with a white background decorated with geometric patterns in pastel colors, giving it a modern, stylish look. This template includes all the necessary elements to present facts and figures regarding the disease, such as diagrams or charts. With it, you can make sure your audience understands more about color blindness and its effects. Get this presentation template now and be an expert in eye diseases!

Features of this template

• 100% editable and easy to modify
• 20 different slides to impress your audience
• Contains easy-to-edit graphics such as graphs, maps, tables, timelines and mockups
• Includes 500+ icons and Flaticon’s extension for customizing your slides
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A Total Guide to Accessible Colors [Including Palettes & Templates]

By Jessie Strongitharm , Nov 30, 2022

Color is important. Like,  really  important. So important, that  93% of people  report it being the number one factor influencing their purchasing decisions. But remember: not everyone experiences color in the same way.  With over 2.2 billion people  affected by a visual impairment, failing to design with accessible colors in mind is one costly, exclusionary mistake to make. 

So to help you appeal to your whole audience, I’ve done a deep dive into all aspects of accessible colors.

Keep reading for an infographic overview of what they are, why they matter and how you can easily create be- hue -tifully inclusive color pairings — along with tons of tips, examples and templates too.

Click to jump ahead:

Accessible colors 101 [infographic].

• What are accessible colors? 

Color accessibility guidelines

• Why are accessible colors important? 
• Examples of accessible colors and templates

How do you choose accessible colors? 

• Quick tips to improve color accessibility

Accessible colors FAQ

Return to Table of Contents

What are accessible colors?

Accessible colors are color combinations that have enough contrast to make layered elements (such as text or icons on a background) clearly distinguishable to those visually impaired or deficient in color vision. A key component of  accessible design , accessible colors pay consideration to how people with disabilities understand information, in order to ensure all components of a page are  accessible , legible and inclusive. 

Wondering what  makes  a color accessible? For folks who are “colorblind”, the ability to differentiate certain hues depends on the color contrast ratio — or the degree of contrast between two layered objects (i.e. foreground and background colors). 

Established by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3), these contrast ratios are laid out in the  Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)  — a continuously-updated document that defines accessibility standards and provides instructions on how to make digital content accessible to people with sensory impairments. I’ll discuss the specifics of those color contrast ratios in a moment. But first, let’s review the types of impairments that require accessible design choices. 

Related: Image Alt Text: Definition and Best Practices for Accessible Designs

Types of color blindness 

Despite the name, over 99% of “colorblind” individuals  can  actually see color — just not in the same way as those who aren’t impacted.

Red-green color blindness 

The most common form of red-green colorblindness is deuteronomaly. Affecting 5% of males, this deficiency makes it difficult to distinguish red and green colors, or separate blue pigments from purple.

Blue-yellow color blindness

Vision deficiencies affecting the ability to differentiate blue and yellow tones are much more rare, but they impact men and women equally. With blue-yellow color blindness, blue will look more like green, yellow will look more like gray or violet, and pink will be hard to distinguish.

Complete color blindness

Though extremely rare, there are some people who have  monochromacy  — the inability to distinguish between any colors at all.

With  over 360 million “colorblind” people in the world  (and counting!), the importance of using accessible colors in your communication designs cannot be overstated.

This comparison shows why differentiating interactive components, system warnings and success/error states through high contrast colors is vital. You can imagine how frustrating it would be to read a page with incomprehensible text, or to try and figure out what property to adjust on a form when an error is only indicated via red outline. 

In other words, making your communications usable and legible to those visually impaired helps ensure all the time and energy spent designing really counts. 

Let’s take a look at those color contrast ratios in more detail. 

The  WCAG 2.1  provides clear recommendations on how to make content accessible for everyone, regardless of disability or device. They’re based on three levels of compliance — A, AA and AAA — that stem from the color contrast ratio of layered components.

A – Minimal accessibility

Color combinations with a contrast ratio below 4.5:1 for normal text (and 3:1 for large text and graphics) will cause difficulties for many people with disabilities and impairments. 

AA – Strong accessibility

Color pairings with a contrast ratio of 4.5:1 and above provide sufficient accessibility for use in normal text, large text and graphics. 

AAA – Enhanced accessibility

Color combinations with a contrast ratio of 7:1 for normal text and 4.5:1 for large text and graphics provide enhanced accessibility. Government sites typically follow these standards.

TLDR:  a minimum color contrast ratio of 4.5:1 is best practice for text and interactive elements to meet the needs of colorblind or visually impaired users.

Here’s an example of an accessible infographic that follows a contrast ratio of 4.5:1.

FYI (yenno, because this blog doesn’t have enough abbreviations), you can customize this template, or any other accessible template, to suit your needs by swapping out the text components within. 

WCAG exceptions

There are three exceptions to the 4.5:1 contrast requirement for text: 

• Large text:  for 18 pt text and larger, or 14 pt  bold  text and larger, a color contrast ratio of 3.1 is acceptable.
• Incidental text: text that’s inactive, decorative or unimportant to an image.
• Logotypes 

Wondering if these guidelines are legally enforceable? The answer depends on where you live and who you work for. Check out the FAQ section for more information.

And if accessibility guidelines still sound confusing, you can always use an accessibility tool to check your designs and ensure their color contrast and design compliance.

Why is choosing accessible colors important? 

At this point, we’ve covered a few reasons why using accessible colors is important. But for posterity, I’ll review… 

First and foremost, accessible colors make your designs usable and legible to those with visual impairments. By empowering these groups to interact with visual environments the same way non-impacted folks do, accessible design choices show your entire audience they’re seen and supported by your organization.

(Why anyone would want to alienate 360 million people — and counting ! — is beyond me.)

What’s more, using accessible colors is a wholesale way to prioritize equity and inclusion. Folks with low vision, and even those without any impairments, will benefit from more clear, distinguishable UX designs. 

With  inclusive visuals top-of-mind  for consumers in 2023, you have every reason to prioritize accessibility.

And while WCAG compliance isn’t mandatory for private businesses yet, legal troubles for those who don’t follow these guidelines abound.

In 2021,  more web accessibility lawsuits than ever  were filed against businesses for violating the American Disabilities Act ( see FAQ for more info ). If these cases are anything to go by, today’s best practices could become tomorrow’s requirements. 

So, clear ethical choice. Smart business decision. No matter what you call it, using accessible colors is the right thing to do.

Convinced? Cool. Now, let’s discuss how you can pick inclusive pairings.  Related: ADA Standards for Accessible Design: How to Be Compliant

In a typical design process, you’d choose a color palette, put together a visual and then manually check it for accessibility using a  contrast checker  or  color blindness simulator . 

This means you have to mix, match, test and retest, until you’ve found something that works. 

Translation: there’s a ton of trial, error and time involved… so save yourself extra time and effort by flipping this process around! 

With  Venngage’s 100% free Accessible Color Palette Generator , you can generate a range of beautiful, WCAG-compliant color palettes in one of two ways — no design experience or accessibility knowledge required.

Here’s how it works: 1. Generate an accessible color palette based on a predetermined color

Have a color in mind (such as a brand color?). All you need to do is input your predetermined HEX color code in the box at the top of the page, and the  Accessible Color Palette Generator  will do the work for you. 

I’ll use Venngage’s very own blue as an example… After inputting a HEX code, a swatch dot will appear on the left hand side to confirm you haven’t made one of those classic copy paste mistakes.

Then, all that’s left is to hit ‘Generate’, and the tool will produce different palettes with guaranteed accessible color and text pairings. 

This includes:

• Vibrant color palettes
• Monochromatic color palettes
• Contrasting color palettes
• Pastel color palettes
• Contrasting pastel color palettes
• Dark to light / light to dark color palettes,  oh my!

You’ll also find either black or white text on each shade that confirms the layered combo passes the 4.5:1 contrast ratio required for accessible color design.

Once you’ve found your perfect match (or  matches , rather), select the download button on the right side to get a copy of the HEX codes as a text file. And there you have it — brand consistency, meet accessibility, meet quickly. Or, if you’re a free agent… 

2. Generate randomized accessible color palettes In search of inspiration? Shuffle through endless palette options by clicking the ‘Random palette’ button at the top of the  Accessible Color Palette Generator .

The tool will then choose a HEX color code at random, and use it to generate a range of themed shades. Because who doesn’t love to roll the dice every once in a while? 

Again, you’ll see a swatch of the randomly selected color pop up in the HEX code field, so you’ll know exactly what you’re in for. You’ll also see white or black text layered on top of the different color options to confirm accessibility. Found a palette most pleasing? Hit the download button and you’re all set. 

This tool is truly simple and completely free to use no matter which method you choose, so you can pass those accessibility tests with flying colors. 

Examples of accessible color palettes and templates

With this color palette generator, you have a whole  spectrum  of amazing, accessible palettes available to you in moments. To show off this range, I’ve generated some accessible palettes at random for easy reference. 

Below, find examples of accessible color palettes arranged according to color scheme. For good measure, I’ve included a few templates you can easily edit to create beautiful, engaging, inclusive visual communications in the same vein too.

Vibrant accessible color palettes 

Feeling punchy? Vivacious? Full of life? These bright, intense color palettes have got you covered.

Vibrant accessible color templates

Here’s an accessible process infographic template that employs a vivid color scheme.

What’s great is that you can 100% customize its content to suit your needs. If you’re not a fan of these vibrant colors in particular, just use the accessible colors generator and choose a shade with an acceptable contrast ratio for white. (Note that this only applies to templates that have white text, or white sections backing the text!)

Alternatively, this kaleidoscopic presentation packs a colorful, accessible punch.

Monochromatic accessible color palettes

Sometimes, you just need more consistency in your life. (Okay, that was deep. Anyway…) These monochromatic palettes let you stay true to one hue through-and-through.

Monochromatic accessible templates

Layering monochromatic colors on their own is an accessibility faux-pas. To get around it, use white space to break up sections and provide clarity like this presentation template does. 

Otherwise, opt for a high contrast combo by layering your lightest and darkest tones. 

Contrasting accessible color palettes

By splitting the palette into groups of highly contrasting hues, these shades are sure to stand out when used together in a design.

Contrasting accessible templates

Want your project proposal to speak volumes while still looking sophisticated? 

Look no further than the contrasting teal, tone and charcoal tones layered in this template. On the other hand, here’s an infographic that juxtaposes a moody background color with striking pale turquoise accents and white text. 

Pastel accessible color palettes

Color psychology  explains why pastels are so calming and uplifting: with their high brightness and low saturation, these tones are soft, soothing and pleasing for the eyes.

Pastel accessible templates

Wondering why this template forgoes pastels for its pie charts and graphs?

Because pastels have low saturation, it’s difficult to achieve a 4.5:1 ratio when layering. Adjusting the level and adding labels ensures your  data visualizations are color blind-friendly .

Okay, so this one is a bit of a stretch. But with a few customizations using Venngage’s  intuitive drag and drop editor , it’s easy to tweak this infographic so it follows a pastel theme while remaining accessible. Here’s how:

• Decrease the saturation of the colors housing the bullet points.
• Change the white lines separating each section to dark lines.
• Add a black outline to the icon bubbles.

Three steps, and you’re done.

Dark to light accessible color palettes

Last but not least, these palettes contain analogous shades ( in color theory : neighboring hues on the color wheel) that transition from dark to light tones.

Dark to light accessible templates

This timeline infographic employs color in a particularly clever way, conveying the progression of time via tone.

Meanwhile, this informational infographic keeps things clean with two crowd-pleasing hues: navy blue and periwinkle.

Quick tips to improve color accessibility 

1. avoid problematic color combinations.

Because of the way color blindness affects vision, the following low-contrast color combinations tend to present an accessibility issue when layered:

• Red and green
• Green and brown
• Green and blue
• Blue and gray
• Blue and purple
• Green and gray
• Green and black

That said, if you’re set on a certain combination for your designs, it’s not the end of the world. You can always…

2. Break up low contrast colors with white space or dark space 

A simple way to get around issues pairing low contrast colors is to clearly define each section by separating them  using white space  or dark space. (Many of the templates listed above do exactly that).

To figure out which to use, simply input the color’s HEX value into the free accessible color palette generator, and reference the matching hue on the page.

3. Apply icons, underlining, labels and patterns to distinguish elements

When in doubt, don’t rely on color as your only indicator alone. It’s best practice to add another layer of visual differentiation to the mix — particularly for interactive elements,  data visualizations  and error states. For example, writing out  links  in blue font isn’t enough. Underlining hyperlinks ensures everyone will understand where to click.

Icons  or  text labels  should highlight error states or system warnings that would otherwise go unnoticed.

And patterns can up the visual distinction for those with monochromatic vision, like in this example from  Trello .

For more tips on designing for people with color vision deficiency, check out this post: Color Blind Design Guidelines: How to Convey Meaning to Everyone [With Examples & Templates]

What is a WCAG color? 

A WCAG color is shorthand for a color combination that’s accessible and usable to most folks with color vision deficiencies. These colors must be paired with elements or text that adheres to the acceptable level of contrast for web color accessibility as defined by the  Web Content Accesiblity Guidelines  (WCAG): 4.5:1.

What is AA and AAA in color contrast?

In color contrast, AA and AAA describe the level that color schemes (or palettes) conforms to the accessibility standards set by the  WCAG . Level AA is the middle level of compliance that works with most assistive technologies, and requires a (color) contrast ratio of 4.5:1 for normal text and 3.1 for large text in order to be distinguishable for those who are colorblind.

Level AAA is the gold standard level for accessibility compliance used by government sites and requires a contrast ratio of 7:1 for normal text and 4.5:1 for large text.

Are the WCAG guidelines legally enforceable? 

While the WCAG guidelines are not a legal document, section 508  is  a law that requires American federal agencies and their contractors to comply with WCAG 2.0 AA standards. 

For private companies, it’s even more complicated.

The American Disability Act (ADA) — which organizations with more than 15 employees are subject to — requires places of public accommodation be accessible, and many regions now consider businesses’ websites an extension of that.

In 2019, more than 10,000 lawsuits were filed for violating the ADA, and  20% of those involved website and mobile app design . None of those would have occurred had they followed WCAG AA guidelines.

Is purple accessible?

The color purple is accessible so long as the contrast ratio of the colors, texts and elements are 4.5:1 and higher. Typically, this means a lilac shade would need to be paired with darker text/elements in order to be accessible, while a darker purple would need to be paired with lighter text/elements.

The best designs keep accessibility in mind

Rejoice! You’re now armed with the knowledge and tools you need to create beautiful, inclusive designs that empower  all  audiences to engage and participate. 

Now I’d call that a  hue -ge win! Remember to check out the  Accessible Color Palette Generator tool , and take our accessible templates for a spin by  signing up for free . Because at Venngage, we’ve made prioritizing accessibility our prerogative, and you should too. Stay tuned for more exciting news on the accessible design front soon…