Accounting for Colour Blindness when designing maps?

One of my clients is colour blind, and when I make maps for him, I use vischeck.com to check my work. You can upload your own image, and it will return a processed version of it that shows what it will look like to colour blind folks.

It has options for various types of colour blindness, and is pretty educational to boot.

The large majority of the work I do is for a very limited audience, so no, I do not usually account for colorblindness. If you do need to accommodate colorblindness, color brewer has a "colorblind safe" option that is helpful.

This is a very good topic.... and there is software out there for cartographers.

Color Oracle is a colorblindness simulator for Window, Mac and Linux

http://colororacle.cartography.ch/index.html

The system-wide menu quickly converts your art into a palette that simulates what colorblind people see.

Covers different aspects of colorblindness

Deuteranopia, protanopia and tritanopia.

"Designing maps for the colour-vision impaired" [PDF]

http://colororacle.cartography.ch/design.html