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ACE: A Colour Palette Design Tool for Balancing Aesthetics and Accessibility

Authors:

Garreth W. Tigwell,

David R. Flatla,

Neil D. ArchibaldAuthors Info & Claims

ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing (TACCESS), Volume 9, Issue 2

Article No.: 5, Pages 1 - 32

https://doi.org/10.1145/3014588

Published: 02 January 2017 Publication History

Abstract

Colour can convey a mood or elicit a particular emotion and, in terms of web design, colour can influence attitudes, perceptions, and behaviours. However, many websites demonstrate inaccessible colour choices. Numerous online colour palette design tools only focus on assisting designers with either the aesthetics or accessibility of colours. With a user-centered design approach, we developed the Accessible Colour Evaluator (ACE, daprlab.com/ace) which enhances web developers’ and designers’ ability to balance aesthetic and accessibility constraints. We distributed an online questionnaire to 28 web developers and designers to understand their attitudes and utilisation of accessibility guidelines, as well as to gather initial design requirements for ACE. With this information, we created three low-fidelity paper prototypes that were used to create two high-fidelity prototypes. The high-fidelity prototypes were discussed with 4 web developers and designers during a design workshop, and their feedback was used to develop the final version of ACE. A comparative evaluation of ACE and three existing alternative tools was conducted with 10 new web developers and designers. All participants were able to complete a colour palette design task when using ACE and identified ACE as their most preferred tool. The mean scores for the six TLX measures show ACE as providing the best performance and causing the lowest frustration. Finally, we conducted a small focus group with 3 web developers and designers to gather qualitative feedback about ACE. Participants identified a number of ACE’s strengths and made suggestions for future extensions and improvements.

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Cited By

Hegemann LOulasvirta A(2024)Palette, Purpose, Prototype: The Three Ps of Color Design and How Designers Navigate ThemProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3641976(1-19)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3641976
Hegemann LDayama NIyer AFarhadi EMarchenko EOulasvirta A(2023)CoColor: Interactive Exploration of Color DesignsProceedings of the 28th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces10.1145/3581641.3584089(106-127)Online publication date: 27-Mar-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3581641.3584089
Nourian LShinohara KTigwell G(2023)Understanding Discussions Around Culture Within Courses Covering Topics on Accessibility and Disability at U.S. UniversitiesProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581533(1-14)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544548.3581533
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Index Terms

ACE: A Colour Palette Design Tool for Balancing Aesthetics and Accessibility
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Accessibility
    1. Accessibility systems and tools

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Published In

cover image ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing

ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing Volume 9, Issue 2

June 2017

90 pages

ISSN:1936-7228

EISSN:1936-7236

DOI:10.1145/3015565

Editors:
Matt Huenerfauth
Rochester Institute of Technology, USA
,
Kathleen F. McCoy
University of Delaware, USA

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Copyright © 2017 Owner/Author.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 License.

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 02 January 2017

Accepted: 01 November 2016

Revised: 01 September 2016

Received: 01 April 2016

Published in TACCESS Volume 9, Issue 2

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Cited By

Hegemann LOulasvirta A(2024)Palette, Purpose, Prototype: The Three Ps of Color Design and How Designers Navigate ThemProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3641976(1-19)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3641976
Hegemann LDayama NIyer AFarhadi EMarchenko EOulasvirta A(2023)CoColor: Interactive Exploration of Color DesignsProceedings of the 28th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces10.1145/3581641.3584089(106-127)Online publication date: 27-Mar-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3581641.3584089
Nourian LShinohara KTigwell G(2023)Understanding Discussions Around Culture Within Courses Covering Topics on Accessibility and Disability at U.S. UniversitiesProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581533(1-14)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544548.3581533
Sandnes F(2023)Exploring the Usability of the LCH Color Model for Web DesignersCooperative Design, Visualization, and Engineering10.1007/978-3-031-43815-8_5(43-55)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-031-43815-8_5
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https://doi.org/10.3390/chips1010002
Andrew STigwell G(2022)Accessible Design is Mediated by Job Support Structures and Knowledge Gained Through Design Career PathwaysProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/35555886:CSCW2(1-24)Online publication date: 11-Nov-2022
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Nourian L(2022)Improving Web and Mobile Accessibility Resources for Iranian DesignersProceedings of the 24th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility10.1145/3517428.3550418(1-4)Online publication date: 23-Oct-2022
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Kokate UShinohara KTigwell G(2022)Exploring Accessibility Features and Plug-ins for Digital Prototyping ToolsProceedings of the 24th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility10.1145/3517428.3550391(1-4)Online publication date: 23-Oct-2022
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