Designing for Colour Vision Deficiency: A Scoping Review of Resources That Support Designers in Choosing Accessible Colours

Colour plays a crucial role in digital design, but poor design choices can create accessibility barriers for people with colour vision deficiency (CVD). A vast number of CVD-accessible design tools and guidelines have been developed to assist designers. At this stage, a systematic assessment of these approaches is important to help in gaining a better understanding of available design methods and their effectiveness. To address this, we conducted a scoping review of 113 academic papers on CVD-accessibility design methods. We found a lack of variety in methods afforded to designers, with most tools simulating CVD but rarely helping designers explore alternative colour choices or generating accessible palettes. Guidelines often emphasize contrast ratios but overlook other meaningful color use recommendations. We identified ten opportunities for the researcher community to address, such as rethinking the role of redundant encoding and contrast ratios in design.