What makes traffic lights accessible?

I’ve been thinking recently about traffic lights and accessibility.

‘Why on earth would you do that???’ I hear you scream.

Well, because traffic lights were designed with people with colour blindness in mind. That’s why, unless there are logistical reasons, they’re always in a vertical configuration – so if you can’t tell the difference between the colours, you always know which light is telling you to stop or go by its position.
This also has the added benefit of meaning that the lights can still do their job if the coloured glass is smashed, so we all benefit from this ‘adjustment’. Plus, of course, it means we don’t get hit at the crossing when the confused colourblind driver has made the wrong guess!

Still confused about what this has to do with digital accessibility? Well, one of the key adjustments to make on your website to make it more accessible is to make sure that any clickable elements (ie links) are not identifiable by colour alone.

So for your links, yes, make them a different colour, but make them underlined too, or bold, or italics. And this won’t just benefit the colour blind, it will benefit everyone else as well because those all important clickable links will stand out proudly from the rest of your text making them impossible to resist clicking for any visitors to your site.

What’s not to love?