Icons color Accessibility testing - Tools and process

Question

We have a repository of old icons which are flat,gradient,simple,compound icons for win32 and win64 applications(basically legacy software icons). Currently we are trying to do color accessibility for this,so these icons are accessible for visually impaired people.(luminosity and Color blindness)

How can we take this process? What tools we can use to analyze this? How to do the testing of the icon?

I tried Contrast color analyzer tool for luminosity and color blindness, most of icons I tested failed in the process,since the tool asking only for background and foreground color(Ex:Close icon in a red gradient circle,in this case foreground will be reddish orange and red,and background will be white, Most of the results are failing). How do we perform this testing and conclude and suggest icon color accessibility?

Please suggest us.

Attaching icon:

Thanks, Nithin

Answer 1

My suggestion is go for flat icons and use color with purpose. From a user experience perspective, in my opinion, color should be used in certain elements to give attention rather than to represent physical aspects of the element (or other kind of connotations).

If you use icons that have gradients and colors my suggestion to check visually if things have enough contrast or not, is to convert everything to black and white.

To test in a contrast tool, then a possibility, which I am not sure how accurate it is, is to apply an average blur filter to the color to obtain the mid color. Then use that color in the contrast tool and see if it needs more lightness or not.