Accessible colour palette

As the European Accessibility act became law across Europe, Region Skåne wished to improve the accessibility of their charts, which are often complex and multifaceted. This meant the need for an extensive colour palette, that would still be accessible. The difficulty was to come up with so many colours that were distinguishable from each other and accessible. The colours needed to stand out from a white background and be able to be differentiated from each other.

With that in mind, we developed a palette for graphs with many staples beside each other, using a sequence of a darker colour contrasting against the white background, followed by a lighter colour that contrasts against the dark one. This allows people with low vision to differentiate the staples when the colours are right next to each other. In order to be able to distinguish the lighter colour from the background, an outline is used in all the light colours.

This solution was developed with specific complex diagrams in mind, which depend on visualising the staples in a specific order beside each other. We still recommend never using only colour to convey information, and combine the solution with other means of accessibility to increase understanding.

Role: Graphic Designer at KAN.
Team: A KAN team consisting of a project manager, an account manager, a copywriter, a fellow graphic designer, and me.
Works and formats: A colour palette with 30 unique colours, a digital brochure for visualisation, example charts and chart templates for Microsoft Office.