Color blindness affects 8% of the male population and 0.5% of the female population. There are many varying types and degrees of colorblindness, but the most common of these are protanopia, red weakness, or deuteranopia, green weakness, which results in a difficulty in discriminating between red, orange, yellow, and green. By simulating what the Cisco Meraki dashboard users experience would be for colorblind users, and can immediately see a problem for those who cannot distinguish between red and green.

What dashboard looks like to users with normal vision

What dashboard looks like to colorblind users

Device status and connectivity graphs are almost impossible to read for colorblind users. Luckily, there are some simple changes that can greatly improve this experience. There is now a color assist mode in the dashboard that modifies the green hues to blue in order to allow for clearer distinction in device status and alerting functionality. By navigating to ‘my profile’ at the top right corner of the dashboard, color blind assist mode can be enabled on a per user basis. By hovering over the “enable red/green assist mode” button, we can get a preview of what the changes will be.

 

Without red/green assist

With red/green assist

With red/green assist enabled, here is what the status and connectivity graphs will look like for colorblind users.  The blue status shows all of the devices that are healthy, and the brown/red shows the problem areas.

Colorblind simulation with red/green assist mode enabled

Check it out in the dashboard and keep us posted via the ‘make a wish box’ on ways we can keep improving the Cisco Meraki product experience.