Email for Users With Color Blindness

About 1 out of 20 of your readers are likely to have some form of color blindness, a condition that affects 4.5% of the population.

Color blindness can impact your readers’ ability to see a Call To Action button, respond to your branding, and read certain texts.

Designing an accessible newsletter will create goodwill by helping these readers. Accessibility could also help improve your ROI.

What Is the Most Accessible Button Color for Color-Blind Users?

Most people with color blindness can still see blue without difficulty. Mark Zuckerberg has color blindness, which is one of the reasons Meta uses blue in their branding.

However, blue doesn’t imply the excitement of a call to action, so you may not want to use it for a button. 

It’s hard to name a color that is best across the board because the real issue is placing one color against the background of another.

In general, you should try to avoid reds and greens because these colors are the hardest to discern for most people with color blindness. 

As you can see in the picture above, a person who does not have color blindness can easily see the green number 2 on a red background. Some types of color blindness will make it increasingly hard to see the contrast. Others make the colors look different.

Button color is a matter of finding a color that will stand out from its background without creating confusion. Place your button on a white background or at least avoid green/red combinations.

It also helps to add a border around your buttons. Make sure this border is a different color than both the button and the background.

Why Trust Us? All beehiiv writers are carefully vetted for their knowledge and experience. Jacob Bear has been writing email marketing campaigns for more than 10 years and was personally coached by Daniel Levis, author of Email Alchemy. He was recently named a Top Copywriting Voice by LinkedIn. 

What Font Colors To Avoid for Accessibility

As we mentioned above, contrast is more important than avoiding specific font colors. However, avoiding red and green fonts is a good practice.

What Colors Are Difficult for People With Color Blindness?

We’ve seen that red and green are the most difficult for people with color blindness. However, in some of the more rare versions of color blindness, purple is also difficult to see.

If you’re wondering what are bad color combinations for accessibility, minimize the use of green, red, reddish-purple, pink, and violet. 

How Do Blind People Read Email?

Many people with visual disabilities can read by zooming in or enhancing their screen in other ways. Someone who is completely unable to read email will use a screen reader.

By following the best practices outlined below to make your content ADA-compliant, it is easier for a reader to use these features.

How Do I Make My Email ADA Compliant?

Most of the ADA compliance best practices can also help with overall readability and SEO. Here are a few formatting tips to follow.

To master accessibility, you should use an email service provider that allows you to customize your fonts, colors, and other features.

beehiiv has one of the best text editors in email, and our no-code template editor makes it easy to fully customize your email. 

If you want to create an email newsletter for users with color blindness, start a beehiiv newsletter today.