Color Blind Friendly Color Picker

Color Blind Friendly Color Picker starts from a color and returns neutral text and surface colors that reach AA contrast against it, which is the separation color vision deficiencies leave intact.

What is Color Blind Friendly Color Picker?

Color Blind Friendly Color Picker takes a color and returns neutral colors that reach AA contrast against it. The approach is deliberately indirect: rather than simulating a deficiency, it picks the other half of a pairing on the one channel that every deficiency leaves working, which is lightness. If a pairing is separated by luminance, it survives the loss of hue, and that is the property this page is built to find.

Start with the base color, and the tool walks a ramp of neutrals against it:

• Twenty-one neutral steps, generated by moving lightness from 0 to 1 in 5% increments with chroma held at zero.
• A single filter at 4.5 to 1 against your base, which removes every candidate that would not be safe for ordinary text.
• Ratio ordering, strongest first, so the top of the list is the most separated pairing rather than the most harmonious one.
• A shortlist of eight, each shown as text over your base color with its hex value and ratio.

The candidates are built in OKLCH at zero chroma and converted to hex, and each ratio is the standard WCAG 2.x figure: the channels are linearised out of sRGB, weighted 0.2126 red, 0.7152 green and 0.0722 blue into a relative luminance, and the lighter value plus 0.05 is divided by the darker plus 0.05. This is luminance contrast picking rather than color matching, which is why the results are greys, and why they hold up when hue information disappears.

What the page does not do matters as much as what it does.

• It does not simulate any deficiency. The results are chosen for contrast, and they help because lightness survives those conditions, not because the tool models them.
• Every candidate is a pure neutral. A tinted alternative has to be derived from one of the listed values and then re-checked, since its hue will change the ratio.
• The threshold is fixed at 4.5 to 1, so there is no way to request the 3 to 1 large-text figure or the 7 to 1 enhanced level directly.
• Separation between two non-text colors is not addressed. A chart series palette still needs its own review.
• One base color at a time, with no alpha.

Use it when a brand color is fixed and you need text or surface colors that stay readable for viewers who lose hue distinctions. The recommended pattern is to take a neutral from the top of the list for body copy, which keeps the pairing separated in the one channel that survives, and then to verify the result in the simulation pages before shipping.

It is worth separating what this page is from what it is not. A cvd friendly palette needs its separation to sit on the axis the deficiencies leave intact, and the candidates here supply accessible text colors on exactly that basis, which is why every suggestion comes out neutral. Nothing on the page simulates a deficiency, so the results are a strong starting point and should be confirmed in the simulation views rather than treated as a final verdict.

How to use Color Blind Friendly Color Picker

1. Enter the color that has to stay in the swatch field, which will act as the surface.
2. Read the eight candidates, each previewed as text on that color.
3. Pick a value from near the top of the list when the text is small, and further down when a softer pairing is wanted, checking the printed ratio each time.
4. Re-check the chosen pairing in a simulation page to confirm it still separates once hue is removed.

When to use Color Blind Friendly Color Picker vs related tools

Use the color blind friendly color picker when a fixed brand color has to carry text and you want the pairing chosen on lightness rather than hue. Confirming the result against actual deficiencies is the job of the color blindness simulator, checking that the pairing also reads well is the text readability checker, auditing a whole existing palette rather than one base is the palette accessibility checker, and a plain threshold verdict on any pair is the WCAG 2.1 AA checker.

Privacy & Security

This tool runs entirely in your browser — no data ever leaves your device. There is no server round-trip, no upload, no logging, and no account required. Your input is processed locally using client-side JavaScript and is never stored, transmitted, or accessible to anyone else. When you close the tab, everything disappears.

Frequently asked questions about Color Blind Friendly Color Picker