Accessibility

Adobe Photoshop CS4 accessibility overview

Adobe® Photoshop® CS4 software is the definitive solution for professional web photo editing and artwork creation. You can use Photoshop to create and edit photos and graphics and optimize images in a professional environment.

Photoshop integrates with other Adobe products such as Dreamweaver®, Flash®, and Fireworks® software, as well as your other favorite graphics applications and HTML editors, to provide a truly integrated web solution. You can easily export Photoshop graphics to other Adobe authoring applications, such as Adobe Dreamweaver CS4, or directly export a sliced image to HTML.

Color blindness filters

Photoshop supports Color Universal Design (CUD) through its soft proofing features, which can simulate color blindness. This feature enables the designer to see what the image will look like for people with different types of color blindness, such as protanopia and deuteranopia. Color blindness simulation makes it easier to create accessible signage and other artwork

Soft proof for color blindness

CUD ensures that graphical information is conveyed accurately to people with various types of color vision, including people with color blindness. Several countries have guidelines that require CUD-compliant graphics in public spaces.

The most common types of color blindness are protanopia (blindness to red) and deuteranopia (blindness to green). About one-third of color blind people are completely blind to red or green; most of the remainder have milder forms of color blindness.

color comparisons

A. Original image. B. Color-blind proof. C. Optimized design.

Accessibility validation

To determine whether a document is CUD-compliant:

  • Convert the document to RGB color mode, which provides the most accurate soft proofs for color blindness.
  • To simultaneously view the original document and a soft proof, choose Window > Arrange > New Window (optional).
  • Choose View > Proof Setup > Color Blindness, and then choose either Protanopia-type or Deuteranopia-type. (To comply with CUD, check your document in both views.)

In Photoshop, you can print the proof. For more information, search for "Print a hard proof" in Photoshop Help.

If objects are difficult to distinguish in color blind proofs, adjust the design by doing any of the following:

  • Change color brightness or hue:
    • Pure red tends to appear dark and muddy; orange-red is easier to recognize.
    • Bluish green is less confusing than yellowish green.
    • Gray may be confused with magenta, pale pink, pale green, or emerald green.
    • Avoid the following combinations whenever possible: red and green; yellow and bright green; light blue and pink; dark blue and violet.
  • Apply different patterns or shapes.
  • Add large white, black, or dark-colored borders on color boundaries.
  • Use different font families or styles.