Lars-Henrik Snow, IRF

Scientific colourmaps: a flowchart based approach on selecting one that is both scientifically accurate and accessible

With three men of European descent as your peer reviewers, the risk of at least one of them being colour blind is over one in five. But even if they can all see colour, your plots might still show artefacts based on human perception of colour and optical illusions not supported by your data. Do all of your reviewers read your manuscript on high quality colour printouts? What about the lighting conditions at your poster session?

In this talk I will introduce a flowchart, that based on questions about your data will guide you to selecting the right colour scheme for it. As well as some general accessibility principles and design patterns that can be applied to improve the scientific accuracy and readability your data presentation.