Red / green colour blindness is by far the most common, so avoid using both together.  Striped cables, as in the earth cable used houses and domestic appliances useful option for one of the four, if such exists for you purposes.  Suggest Black, White, Blue and Green (or a stripy one).  But avoid blue and green shades that are similar in tone, i.e. you would have difficulty differentiating between the two if you took a black and white photo of them. 
 
 
Bryan Jones,
Manager, Disability Support Services
& North London Regional Access Centre,
Middlesex University
Tel: 020 8411 5366
 
-----Original Message-----
From: Discussion list for disabled students and their support staff. [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Nuala Davis
Sent: Thursday, August 30, 2007 2:45 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Cabling - colours and colour-blindness

Hi

 

Can anybody offer any pearls of wisdom or useful pointers on the issue of choosing colours to avoid potential problems for people who are colour blind.  This query came to me from one of our network team here:

 

We are looking to colour coordinate our networking cables in the machine rooms around campus.  I was hoping you could advise me on which colours would be best to avoid problems for folk with colour-blindness.

 

We would need 4 different colours, one of which would need to be white and one would be need to be green.

 

Thanks

Nuala Davis
Assistive Technology, ISS
Newcastle University
0191 222 5680