Accessibility fedi, may I nerd snipe you a little. At the makerspace we have 9 doors. I'd like to repaint each door a unique colour, so we can have simple stuff like "lock on blue door broken" and remove ambiguity. Except, as xkcd has proven, colours are hard.
Is there a set of 9 (maybe 10 to allow for future expansion) unique colours that work with all colour blindnesses, and related visual accessibility needs?
@quixoticgeek what about picking a colorscheme that is as friendly to colorblind as possible, and and add symbols from sign language to it? https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334307459_Historical_Roots_of_Czech_Sign_Language_Signs_for_Colour_Terms
The dutch one is a bit different, I think brown is connected to chocolate? But can't find a nice overview now.
@quixoticgeek could you paint each a color and also label each with the name of the color? perhaps in multiple languages in use in your community?
@quixoticgeek That work with all colour blindnesses? No. People with monochromacy can't even see brown.
The ten that people are most likely to agree on are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, white, grey, black, and brown. (And even then people will call brown "rust" or purple "violet"...)
You could put patterns on the doors?
@quixoticgeek our freezers at work have printouts of Star wars droids.
@quixoticgeek ISO 9241-110: "Do not use colors alone for distinguishing elements."
(That's a standard for user interfaces, but still sound advice.)
@quixoticgeek can you go for a simple distinguishing marking. Say circle, crescent, triangle, square, cross, diamond, and so on. Then a contrasting colour scheme. White square on red door or red square on a white door would be clear I think.
@quixoticgeek Semiconductor manufacturer logos might be appropriate for a makerspace? 😀
@me_ @quixoticgeek I would be very disappointed to go through the Zilog door and not find a Mysterious Cave full of magical elves lovingly hand-crafting open source Z80s.
@quixoticgeek If you're amenable to pairing colors rather than single-colored doors, you can get by with a smaller number of colors.
Also just thought of ethernet wire sets, but that's only 8 options, not necessarily colorblind friendly.
@quixoticgeek number them, name them, don't color them!
@quixoticgeek I think once you get to nine folks won't agree on color names unambiguously either. At that point you'll have multiple shades of blue or red or whatever. Is that light red or pink? Orange or gold? Wine red or purple? Etc. If numbers are too inelegant, why not planets (photo + name) or some other fun scheme?
Numbers - as others have suggested - would probably be the least confusing.
Big bold number plaques and maybe Braille ones, too.
@quixoticgeek Put a big sticker with an animal on it?
Pre-schools have solved this problem since forever.
@forse alas even in English speaking nations animal names are not consistent. See turtle and tortoise.
@quixoticgeek @forse but as long as you don’t have one door with a turtle and another with a tortoise this should be fine? Like if someone says “go to the turtle door” I’m not gonna be confused if I think the animal is better described as a tortoise.
You could even just use familiar emoji:
- 🐍
- 🐕
- 🐎
- 🐠
- 🐒
- 🐙
- 🐇
- 🐸
-🐝
-🦩
@quixoticgeek I suggest looking at the color palettes for scientific publications for nerd level argument about how to and not to do this.
https://docs.bokeh.org/en/latest/docs/reference/palettes.html has some ideas and links to https://github.com/d3/d3-3.x-api-reference/blob/master/Ordinal-Scales.md#categorical-colors which may have the advantage of being in some sense normative.
@quixoticgeek@social.v.st Best approach would be to write the name of the colour on the door I think. Otherwise you're into resistor colour code territory.
@quixoticgeek Sorry, I don't know what you are up to, but think about blind people, or, if it's not pertinent, about color-blind people. I'd suggest to proceed with painting but have other reference, like "third door" or "wooden door" or "door with a flower on it", I'm making stuff up now but color alone is a no-no per any accessibility standard. #Accessibility
@menelion i thought that would be the case. But wanted to check.
@earthtopus ooh. Btw link without going via Google:
https://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/sites/default/files/2022-06/Colorblind%20Safe%20Color%20Schemes.pdf
@quixoticgeek you might get 8, but not 9: https://boardgamegeek.com/image/5916979
Board gamers have huge threads on game design and colour blindness, so maybe a place to start
@quixoticgeek Monochromacy exists in humans, so no, there is not. I suggest painting numbers on the doors.
@quixoticgeek my understanding is that in these kinds of situations, there aren’t any color sets that work for all different kinds of color blindness, so your best bet is to use saturation rather than hue. So, you’d have a red door and a green door, and red-green colorblind people would know to go to the lighter one, rather than the greener one. But! I’m not colorblind so ymmv
@dougwade I thought as much. :(
@quixoticgeek
white, grey, black,
vertical/horizontal stripes in black+white, gray+white,black+gray
@miniBill stripes aren't going to have enough differentiation I think, in terms of "it's the stripey door" would be used when it could be either the horizontal or the vertical. It's a Makerspace, I wonder how long white would stay white...
@quixoticgeek fair enough. I was mostly pointing at the general direction of "use patterns rather than colours".
On the same note: what if you draw a shape or animal on each? Then you can still pick rainbowy colours, but the animals are there for accessibility?
@miniBill that could work. Likewise a number... We have a lot of tool cabinets, and our inventory just says "in the grey cabinet" of which we have 5. My plan is to repaint each cabinet with a flag from a Dutch province.
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