We live close to the Mall of America. It’s one of the biggest malls…. in America.

A few months back Fancy Boyfriend™ and I traveled to the mall for a comedy show. He was driving through one of the parking garages looking for an open parking spot. It was a Saturday night, so the mall was pretty busy.

Several years ago, the mall installed these neat lights on the ceiling of the parking garage, in addition to the lights for lighting. The lights are meant to indicate the status of parking spots down each aisle. This means you can drive by any aisles where there are no open spots. It’s, theoretically, really handy. There’s one light for each 4 parking spots. If at least one of those spots is open, the light will be green. If at least one of the spots is open, and it’s a handicap parking spot, the light will be blue. If all four spots are taken, the light is red. The use case is that, as you drive through the main arteries in the parking garage, you can glance down the parking aisles to see if there are any spots open. If you only see red lights than you continue on until you see an aisle with a green light indicating an open parking spot. This should help you find a parking spot more quickly, because you’re not driving up and down the parking aisles. Also, people walking towards the mall tend to walk in-between parked cars. If there are less cars driving down aisles looking for spots (and not peds), it’s safer for people walking to the mall.

Fancy Boyfriend™ starts driving down a completely full aisle. This is the first time he’s been at the mall in years. I assumed that he just didn’t know what the lights were for. I go to this mall almost every morning to walk, so I just assumed that I had some weird advantage. I briefly explained what the lights were for (“tell you which spots are still available”) and he says “OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. That’s what they’re for. How do they show which spots are available? Do they get lighter or darker?”

It took me a beat, but I remembered that Fancy Boyfriend™ is red/green colorblind. One of the biggest malls in America spent, probably, millions of dollars (two parking garages, 6 covered levels each with close to 1,000 parking spots per level… 12,000 parking spots, 3,000ish lights, all wired and intelligent enough to sense cars…) and nearly 10% of the population can’t use it. I think that it’s an awesome idea, but was disappointed that he couldn’t use cool tech.

See video below of the light change, and the difference between standard and red/green colorblind. Please don’t judge my dirty, dirty windshield.

It looks pretty cool, right? Unless you’re colorblind - then it’s not quite as impactful.

So, what’s the point of all this?

We work in restaurants. We’re all aware that it’s a male-dominated industry. Men are more likely to be color-blind than women (8% vs 0.4%). There is an incredibly good chance that you will work with someone who’s colorblind. It’s great to build all these awesome tools to help people, but, if it doesn’t help everyone, it’s a little less awesome.

Also, a lot of restaurants create hard-copy menus or menu boards. It would be well-worth it to look at your menus through the lens of someone who is colorblind. Imagine, for example, you have spicy peppers from green to red hot. Some people might not be able to see those peppers and that could make for an uncomfortable meal.

The good news is, that there are tools you can use to understand how colorblind people see things - there are Chrome extensions that help you see web-based programs as colorblind people see. There are also mobile apps that let you look at things and see how colorblind people see them. (I use this more often, tbh. I kind of use it like a quick filter.) It’s an easy way to ensure that you’re communicating in a way that everyone can comprehend, and something you may want to consider.

There are so many apps and extensions that can help with this, I won’t suggest any particular ones. I would recommend searching for a Colorblind Simulator. Use your discernment when looking for tools.

P.S. - Most of our friends with red-green colorblindness have never seen the color purple. As that is one of my favorite colors, that’s a pretty sobering fact.