When I am working on decorating a room or a digital design project, I often turn to accessible color palettes to select colors that work well together and ensure visual consistency. Even though my color vision is normal, I often encounter color palettes that are challenging for me to access with low vision, including color palettes with low contrast text, broken website links or typos, or images/swatches that are difficult to see; for me, accessible color palettes contain color shade names, RGB/HEX values, high resolution images, and/or easy-to-read labels so I can incorporate these sets of colors into my projects with ease.
There are several ways to curate accessible color palettes for low vision that don’t involve choosing a specific set of colors or merely testing for colorblindness, and this post includes several tips that I have used both when creating color palettes with low vision and browsing color palettes online. This includes strategies like the use of alt text for color palettes, image descriptions for design posts, online color palette generators, and visual search tools can all be used to help make color palettes accessible for visually impaired users. As a bonus, I have also included links to some of my favorite resources that helped me learn about color theory and using color palettes effectively as someone with low vision.
Searching for color palettes online
When searching for accessible color palettes, I find it helpful to use visual search tools or websites specifically for browsing color palettes; for users that have display filters or color filters enabled on their devices, I recommend temporarily turning these filters off when browsing color palettes for best results. I personally enjoy browsing color palettes on the Pinterest app for iPad because it supports Dynamic Text/large print and creators often included specific paint color names or HEX codes as part of the image caption.
Other free tools for generating color palettes or browsing free color palettes that I have used with low vision include:
Coolors free color palette generator
My favorite tool for browsing color palettes with low vision is Coolors, a free color palette generator that can generate new color palettes near-instantaneously by pressing the spacebar. The free version allows users to generate palettes with up to 5 different colors and browse different color schemes, as well as randomly generate new ones. Users can also browse different colors by shade names and lock colors in place before generating a new palette.
I have used Coolors to generate digital color palettes for my website and several graphic design projects over the years using both the Coolors web application and Coolors iOS application to browse color palettes. Some of my other favorite Coolors features include:
- Color Library with shade names.
- Contrast Checker for text and background colors— especially helpful for putting together accessible color palettes for low vision.
- Image Picker for selecting colors from an image.
- Explore Palette for finding color inspiration.
For users that are sensitive to strobe and/or flashing effects, avoid pressing the spacebar too quickly when generating random color palettes, as this can be disorienting to look at or potentially trigger an adverse reaction. I personally avoid pressing the spacebar more than once every few seconds when generating color palettes to avoid a potential strobe or flashing light effect.
Venngage accessible color palette generator
Another tool I really like for creating accessible color palettes is the Venngage accessible color palette generator, which is optimized for the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). Users can generate an accessible color palette from a base HEX value, or use the random color palette generator to explore a variety of accessible color palettes for free.
Canva color palette generator
I use Canva for many graphic design projects because it offers so many keyboard shortcuts, and Canva’s color palette generator is a great tool for generating a color palette from an image or browsing curated color palettes or color combinations. Color palettes generated with Canva include both the color names and HEX values by default (with options for viewing RGB values as well).
Related links
- Coolors – The super fast color palettes generator!
- Venngage Accessible Color Palette Generator
- Canva Colors | Color palette generator
Testing color palettes for colorblindness or color deficiencies
When it comes to creating color palettes for websites or digital design projects, it is important to make sure that color is not used as the sole way of conveying important information or as the sole way of labeling something, as this can lead to accessibility issues for colorblindness or color deficiencies.
Here are a few general tips for creating accessible color palettes for colorblindness:
- Avoid mixing shades of red and green together
- Convert shades of red to magenta
- Combine magenta or red with yellow and cyan for three-color combinations
- Consider using magenta, yellow, green, and blue for four-color combinations
- Pair blue with yellow/orange
- Use a color contrast checker to ensure color(s) meet accessibility standards for contrast
Another strategy for determining if digital art/color palettes provides sufficient color contrast is to temporarily enable a grayscale view. This can be done within the device accessibility settings, or by doing the following:
- Add a new layer to the digital art that is solid black
- Ensure the layer is on top of all other layers, and set it to Hue
- After assessing the color changes, delete or hide the layer
Below, I have also linked colorblindness simulators and ways to check specific colors or color palettes for colorblindness. I really like using Coolors as well as another website called “Are my colors accessible?” when working on web design or digital design projects.
Related links
- Coolors | Color contrast checker
- Are my colors accessible?
- Coloring for Colorblindness (davidmathlogic.com)
- Tips For Creating Art For Visually Impaired Friends
How to write alt text for color palettes
Alternative text (alt text) and image descriptions are text-based descriptions of visual details in an image written primarily for people who are visually impaired (inclusive of blind, low vision, and neurological visual impairment). The primary goal of alt text and image descriptions should be to answer the following questions:
- What is in the image?
- Why is this relevant?
- What would someone need to know about this image in order to understand it?
Writing alt text for color palettes can help users locate RGB/HEX values more easily and provide shade names for colors, as well as make color palettes more accessible in terms of reach— alt text and image descriptions are used for search engine optimization and can be useful when loading images on slow connections.
What to include when writing alt text for color palettes
- If a designer or design/paint company created the color palette, mention the author at the beginning of the description with the palette title. For example, “Convergence color palette by Pantone”
- List colors in their natural reading order, either from top to bottom or left to right.
- If color names are available on the palette (e.g. Daydream), list their names in the order they appear. If specific names are not listed, list the color shades/tints (e.g. sky blue, lime green)
- If HEX values or RGB values are included on the palette, list the values next to the color name or shade name. For example, Lilac purple (HEX #B49AD9)
- For palettes that include additional text, write out the text verbatim in the order that it appears.
What to exclude when writing alt text for color palettes
- Overly detailed descriptions of colors. It’s ok to include color or shade names, but don’t spend a lot of time describing what red looks like
- Basic color names such as red, orange, purple, etc. Color palettes are specific about what colors go together, so shade or specific color names are immensely helpful
- If there is an image associated with a color palette, the image does not need to have extensive alt text since the accompanying color palette is the most valuable information. If I had a color palette with a photo of a parrot, I would write “Color palette inspired by an image of a parrot. Colors included are” followed by the color information
- Opinions on how the color palette looks that are not expressed in the palette itself. If a color palette is labeled “bad colors for a kitchen”, this is considered text that should be included in the alt text, but the author of the alt text should make sure their description is objective.
Related links
- How To Write Alt Text and Image Descriptions for the Visually Impaired
- How To Write Alt Text For Amateur Art
Choosing color palettes for low vision
There is no single color that is considered the best color for low vision, or a universal color palette for low vision; visual impairment is a spectrum, not a binary, just like the color wheel! As someone with low vision that primarily accesses information visually, I gravitate towards analogous color palettes, split-complementary color palettes, or triadic color palettes over monochromatic color palettes because the other types of color palettes tend to have more contrasting colors, which is something I personally enjoy.
High contrast color schemes for low vision
When choosing accessible color palettes for low vision users as part of digital design/web design projects, the most important characteristic to keep in mind is contrast. Contrast is defined as the difference of color that makes an object (or the foreground) visible against a background of a different color, with a contrast ratio showing the luminance of the brightest shade to the darkest shade. For low vision, high contrast color schemes may involve limited color palettes or removing non-essential colors, while other high contrast color schemes simply make colors easier to see against different backgrounds.
Some examples of common high contrast color schemes for low vision include:
- White and black
- Black and yellow
- Green and black
- Yellow and blue
- Grayscale display
Other ways that high contrast color schemes may be used include
- Using a solid-colored background to decrease visual complexity
- Avoiding patterns, prints, or stripes that can make it more difficult to focus on objects
- Adding a colored overlay to a page to make it easier to read text
There is no “universal” color scheme for high contrast and low vision, as preferences for color scheme can vary amongst individuals or be influenced by their specific vision condition. However, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines define enhanced contrast for text as having a minimum value of 7:1 for standard print text and 4.5:1 for large or bold text.
Learning to DIY color palettes with low vision
As much as I enjoy browsing accessible color palettes online, I have also enjoyed creating my own color palettes for interior design and digital design projects, especially for websites. Here are resources for learning to DIY color palettes/create color palettes that I have found especially useful, and that support text resizing for users with low vision:
- How to make your own color palettes | Greg Gunn
- Color Theory for Designers, Part 3: How To Create Your Own Color Schemes And Palettes
- Color Inspirations More than 3,000 Innovative Palettes from the Colourlovers.Com Community By Darius A Monsef IV (used as a required textbook/reading for one of my classes)
Can blind people see colors?
Visual impairment is a spectrum, not a binary, and many people with visual impairments possess some residual vision or ability to recognize some colors. Some of my friends that are blind with no usable vision can still see some colors— anecdotally, this has included colors like orange, yellow, and silver. They are also aware of what other colors look like because they have been exposed to color descriptions. Even my friends who are congenitally blind with limited light perception have their own preferences for colors and have a favorite color(s).
I wanted to acknowledge this because there have been many times where my friends have had other people make color decisions or choose color palettes on their behalf without consulting them first, which made them feel left out or frustrated. While there are some people who will openly say they don’t care about colors, it is still nice to ask someone if they have any particular color preferences or ideas for colors they want to use instead of making decisions on their behalf.
Related links
- High Contrast and Low Vision
- How To Create High Resolution Images For Low Vision
- How To Request Accessible Textbooks In College
More resources on accessible color palettes for low vision
- My first introduction to exploring and creating color palettes with low vision came from making friendship bracelets, and I share several tips for making this activity accessible in Making Friendship Bracelets With Low Vision
- Need ideas for teaching a visually impaired student in the art classroom? Read Art Classes and Low Vision
- While this post focuses primarily on accessing visual art using visual modalities, there are several awesome audio-based art resources as well. Check out Audio Art Resources For Visually Impaired Students
- Painting a room or looking for interior design inspiration? Read Choosing Paint Colors For Low Vision
Published November 4, 2020. Updated March 2026