Over the weekend, I signed up for a product that asked me to create a password:
Simple enough, right?
Except the form showed which rules I’d met with little red and green dots. No text, no icons, no context. Just colors.
Guess what? If you’re one of the 300 million people worldwide with colour blindness, that signup form might as well be written in invisible ink.
And let’s be clear: this isn’t just bad design. It’s exclusion.
The Ugly Truth About Color-Only Design
When you rely on colour alone, you’re silently telling 8% of men and 0.5% of women this product wasn’t built for you.
That’s thousands of potential customers bouncing at the very first step because they can’t tell which requirement they failed. Imagine investing in ads, marketing, onboarding flows…and then losing users because you couldn’t be bothered to add an icon or a line of text.
This isn’t just an accessibility issue. It’s a conversion killer.
Why We Should All Care
Accessibility isn’t niche. If your product scales, color blind users aren’t “edge cases” — they’re paying customers.
It’s lazy design. Adding an icon or some microcopy is hardly expensive, yet it prevents real exclusion.
We’re all one bad design choice away from alienating people who would love to use what we’ve built.
And honestly? It’s 2025. We should know better by now.
What Good Looks Like
Here’s the bare minimum we owe our users:
✔️ Pair color with symbols (✔️ / ✖️ or clear icons)
✔️ Add short text (“Needs a special character”)
✔️ Test your work with color-blindness simulators
✔️ Follow WCAG – they’ve been telling us this for years
Accessibility isn’t rocket science. It’s empathy in interface form.
A Call-Out to Our Industry
The next time you design a flow and reach for green = good, red = bad… STOP!
Ask yourself:
- What happens if someone can’t see the difference?
- Would they still understand what to do?
- Would they still feel welcome here?
If the answer’s no, you’ve just built a gate that keeps people out.
And that’s on you — not them.
Let’s Do Better
Every time we ignore accessibility, we exclude real people. People trying to give us their money, time, and trust.
Design isn’t just about aesthetics. It’s about inclusion.
And exclusion, whether intentional or not, is always bad design.