This got me thinking about the importance of color in web design and information presentation. In print multicolored text is essentially tacky and frowned upon--the only consistent use I can think of on paper is that many Bibles will gloss Jesus's words in a special red ink. But on screens color as content is de rigeur. One of the first things you do when editing a style sheet is set the color preferences--body text, links, links-while-hovered, links that have been clicked-on. Gmail threading appeals to me partially b/c the alternating colors used to gloss each new message in the set helps prevent them from running together in an overwhelming mass of information. On SaheliDatta.com, the component blogs are each glossed in their own color theme on the main page. Obviously, it's very difficult to even figure out how to compensate for this issue properly if you don't completely understand what it feels like.

But can we overrely on it? A friend of mine just told me that she can't see the links on her own blog, ahd she finally realized it was her color blindness at fault. Color blindness is oft-forgoten but sometimes powerfully obstructive. I asked her if she liked the color-threading feature on Gmail, and while she isn't a regular user, she didn't even remember what I was talking about. She told me of her frustration with colorful PowerPoint slides wherin a deep red graph-line blends into a blue background. She said there are websites that let designers see what their websites look like to the color blind, but she can't tell if they work since they look the same to her regardless.
I just found Vischeck, but I also can't tell if it works--maybe this blog looks the same to a color blind person.

I remember once me and my sister were baffled in an emergency room--we came across a tall mult-drawered cabinet, each drawer a brilliant hue and covered in two labels--one for the contents, and one for the color! It was only later that I realized that if a non-colorblind Nurse shouted to a color blind nurse, "the stents are in the green drawer!" that hint might be useless without the additional labelling. Design is all about integrating form and function, but when the full range of function isn't entirely clear to the designer, aesthetics might beat out usefulness. Regardless, color is an important part of Web 2.0 and if we are going to regard all these widgets as real, useful tools we have to think about how useful they are to everyone.