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Adam Smolenski
Adam Smolenski

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Any colorblind front-end developers?

This may be a silly question... I am still working on breaking into Web Development but a common thread has been coming up. As I work on portfolio projects I share with friends, every time they mention the colors being off. I know I'm colorblind, so does this mean I should focus on backend work?
Are there folks in this line of work who are also colorblind and give me some guidance? I love working with React and other frameworks but if this would sort of cause problems down the end, I hope to find out sooner rather than later :).
Also due to this is it a bad idea to make a portfolio with mainly black white and grey which seems to be my comfort zone?

Top comments (2)

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avalai profile image
Marina

I'm not colorblind myself, but have worked with and know other devs who are. I don't believe it has ever been a significant deterrent, since mock-ups will usually provide a hex value for all colors, and there's always someone to ask if you need a second opinion.

For personal projects, you could try learning about color theory and then using palette tools or pre-made palettes to pick colors. But even us non-colorblind folk often end up asking for another opinion, so you're not alone there!

About the portfolio design - I've found that recently there's been a trend of minimalistic portfolio/site design, and I love it. There's nothing wrong with a black and white webpage where all the info is easy to find. You could even use a single accent color, if you feel like it's a little bland. Design elements like typography and whitespace are far more important in design.

Here are a couple of examples I could think of off the top of my head:
Dan Abramov: overreacted.io/
Tom Preston-Werner: tom.preston-werner.com/

I hope this helps! You should pursue whichever dev path you feel excited about.

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nicozerpa profile image
Nico Zerpa (he/him)

I've worked alongside a guy who was colourblind... not only he was a front-end developer, he was also a designer. And he was good at both!