Elon Musk's Twitter Introducing Blue, Gold And Gray Checkmarks Isn't Inclusive Of Color-Blind People?

Elon Musk's Twitter now shows Gold, Gray and Blue checkmarks for different types of accounts. But some users are complaining that these features aren't inclusive of color-blind people.

What Happened: As Twitter announced that additional icons — Gray checkmarks for government and multilateral accounts and Gold badges for business accounts — are now live, concerns regarding those being indistinguishable by color-blind people have started rising on the platform. 

See Also: Twitter Tells My Colleague His Account Is 'Notable' While Elon Musk's 'May Or May Not Be:' Here's What's Going On

What happens when you lay off your entire accessibility team? You launch a set of icons that cannot be distinguished by the color blind. https://t.co/hvSZ3kOkRd

— Eva (@evacide) December 20, 2022

@elonmusk based on twitter's DAU there are tens of thousands of achromatic colorblind people on the platform every day. Here's what your badges look like to them. An accessibility team or prioritised design team would have been able to tell you that. There are legal implications. pic.twitter.com/UtBowxMCFA

— Ian Hamilton (@ianhamilton_) December 19, 2022

Yet another example of why the accessibility team @elonmusk fired was so important:
Differentiating between accounts using primarily color means millions of color blind people will struggle to identify the origin of the account. https://t.co/AyMFuel3Df

— Kendall Brown (@kendallybrown) December 20, 2022

Users are also suggesting that these details wouldn't have been missed if Musk hadn't laid off the accessibility team along with 50% of the company's global workforce. 

Twitter did not immediately respond to Benzinga's request for comment. 

Why It's Important: Users who don't know what a particular badge or checkmark denotes, considering there are more than just blue checkmarks now, can click on the icon to get additional text. However, users need to go to the person's profile first to do this. 

According to the U.K. National Health Service, color vision deficiency, or color blindness, can make it challenging to identify and distinguish between specific colors. Most people with this deficiency face difficulty distinguishing between shades of red, yellow and green. Others find it hard to tell the difference between red, orange, yellow, brown and green. 

Read Next: The People Have Spoken: Snoop Dogg, Not Elon Musk, Should Sit On The Twitter Throne