Theresa Wilkinson

Articles & Publications

When Color Becomes a Barrier

While working as a UX researcher at Paycor, I conducted an accessibility audit on the new website design. The company’s brand colors—light green and orange—looked cheerful on the screen, but I knew from experience that they could cause problems for users with red/green color blindness.

I wrote a short report explaining the risk, especially since some of the new screens used color alone to indicate errors. Unfortunately, nothing changed before testing.

During usability tests on the new form screens, where over half of the participants were 45 years or older, every single participant failed the task. A 100% failure . I had never seen that before. It was a humbling reminder that accessibility isn’t optional—it’s foundational.

Design choices that seem small, like a color palette, can completely block a group of users from succeeding. In the U.S., about 8% of men and 0.5% of women have red-green color blindness—roughly 14 million people who could be affected by this kind of design choice.

Findings from the March usability test:

• Some users could not tell which field was in error due to similar colors of field outlines. The red outline of missing information was not obvious. Two users tried to “correct” the field outlined in orange instead of red, likely due to color blindness.
• Although the error description at the top of the screen displayed, the error message beside the field did not appear until the user clicked into it. User 4 did not see the red field outline and corrected the wrong field. If the error message beside the field had displayed immediately, all errors could have been corrected faster.

Accessibility is not about compliance—it’s about inclusion. If even one person can’t use your product, the experience isn’t truly user-centered.

Open to contract UX research opportunities.

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