Color Scale Generator
Interpolate an even scale between two or more colours.
Color Blindness Simulator
See your colours as the eight percent of men who see them differently do.
Your colours
Simulated values
The simulated colours appear here
Quick Tool Overview
The Color Blindness Simulator renders your colours as each of the seven common colour vision deficiencies sees them, using the Machado matrices in linear light, and flags any two colours in your palette that collapse into one.
- What it does
- Simulates colour vision deficiency on your colours
- You give it
- One colour or a whole palette
- You get back
- Every condition rendered, plus any collisions
- Best for
- Charts, status colours and any palette carrying meaning
About the Color Blindness Simulator
Around one man in twelve and one woman in two hundred has some form of colour vision deficiency. This tool renders your colours the way each type sees them, so you can tell whether a palette still works when the difference you are relying on disappears.
All seven common conditions are covered: deuteranomaly and deuteranopia (weak or absent green cones — by far the most common), protanomaly and protanopia (red), tritanomaly and tritanopia (blue, and rare), and achromatopsia, which removes colour entirely. Severity is adjustable, because the anomalous forms are a spectrum rather than a switch.
The simulation uses the Machado, Oliveira and Fernandes matrices, applied in linear-light sRGB where they are defined — the same model the major design tools use. The tool also flags the specific failure that matters most: two colours in your palette that look distinct to you but collapse into the same colour under one of the simulations.
Key features of the Color Blindness Simulator
All seven conditions
Protanopia, deuteranopia and tritanopia, their anomalous forms, and achromatopsia — with how common each one is.
Adjustable severity
The anomalous forms are a spectrum rather than a switch, so the strength is a slider.
Collisions called out
The real failure is two colours becoming the same colour. The tool names the pairs rather than leaving you to spot them.
The standard model
Machado, Oliveira and Fernandes matrices applied in linear-light sRGB, the same approach the major design tools use.
Side by side
Every simulation sits next to the original, which is the only way a subtle shift is visible.
How to use the Color Blindness Simulator
-
1
Enter your colours
A single colour, or a whole palette pasted one per line.
-
2
Compare the rows
Each condition is shown beside the original, so the difference is immediate.
-
3
Adjust the severity
The anomalous forms are partial. Drag the slider to see mild through to complete.
-
4
Check the collisions
The tool lists any pair of your colours that becomes indistinguishable, which is the real failure.
Frequently asked questions
Deuteranomaly, if you only test one — it is roughly 5% of men on its own. In practice, if a palette survives deuteranopia and protanopia it survives almost everything, because those two account for the overwhelming majority of cases.
Not quite. The red and green cones overlap heavily, so what is lost is the ability to separate hues along that axis — which also affects orange, brown, olive and some purples. Red and green are just the clearest example.
It is a good model of dichromacy, which is well understood. The anomalous forms are harder: severity varies between people and interpolating toward normal vision is an approximation, which is what every tool including this one does.
Separate them by lightness as well as hue, or carry the meaning with something other than colour — a label, an icon, a pattern, a position. WCAG 1.4.1 requires that colour is never the only way information is conveyed, for exactly this reason.
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