Charts and Graphs

It is important to be thoughtful about colors and how they will be seen by different people, especially for data visualizations that communicate nuanced information using color. This project grew out of a desire to have color schemes that were simultaneously accessible and aligned with U-M branding. The standard U-M color schemes do not meet accessibility guidelines, and color palettes generated to maximize accessibility can look discordant compared to palettes designed solely to be visually appealing.

The color palettes and templates here are designed to simultaneously meet the needs of (nearly) all groups (red-green colorblindness as well as different needs such as protanopia, deuteranomaly, protanomaly, monochrome vision, and low vision) and also align with U-M colors. 

Templates & Tools

At this site, we provide resources for creating charts and graphs with the best possible merging of U-M Brand Colors and accessibility for multiple kinds of visual needs. Use these colors and/or templates whenever you create a U-M branded data visualization for any audience to improve accessibility for anyone who may view the materials, now or later.

• Color Ramps: We provide color ramps (endorsed University-wide) so that you can incorporate these colors into any visualization that you wish to make.

• Templates with Pre-Made Charts: We have prepared template files (in both MS Office and Google Workspace) that will allow you to easily create visualizations of your data that both match U-M branding and are accessible to nearly all readers. There are four different color palette options, depending on the type of data values that you have, and examples of four different graph types (column graph, 100% stacked, pie chart, line graph). The palettes could also be used with graphs that you make on your own, but these 16 examples are offered as a way to make use of the palettes with minimal investment of your time, and these graphs also follow best practices in data visualization design.

• Template Files: We provide more-technical template files for those who want these chart formatting options to be available in MS dropdown menus to apply directly to any selected table of data.

The sequential and diverging charts’ colors do not reach the 3:1 contrast ratio with their neighboring colors that is recommended for readers with low vision. However, overemphasis on contrasting the colors with the background can cause accessibility issues when reading inside the visualization itself. Therefore, a higher range of shades used within a single-hue palette will be more accessible (Source: Accessibility and The Sequential Palettes, A Case Study on IBM's Color Palettes).

Colors in the templates were tested using various color accessibility tools. It is important to note that these templates were designed to meet standards, but that every individual with a disability has a different lived experience, so it may be possible that individuals may still not be able to perceive differences in the colors. If you know an audience member has a specific disability, you may want to prepare data visualizations that make use of patterns; but by using these palettes or templates as your defaults, the visualizations that you use at every meeting will be both attractive and typically accessible.

If you want to use different colors in your visualizations or design work, please consider installing the Color Contrast Analyser from the Software Center or from the TPGI Free Resources site. Users can enable the color blindness simulation feature in the application, it is not enabled by default.

Work on the Accessible Color Palette for Data Visualizations project was led by Evangeline Yeh (visualizations), Jasmine Duong (palette), and Dan Fitzpatrick of the LSA Opportunity Hub. The goal of the project was to design color palettes that employed the University of Michigan Brand (University of Michigan - Brand Accessibility; University of Michigan - Brand Colors) while also being accessible; then, to create template visualizations using those palettes to facilitate adoption across campus.