I think it would make much more sense if the web application / browser / operating system can adjust the colours to fit a colour-blind person, rather than apply

I think it would make much more sense if the web application / browser / operating system can adjust the colours to fit a colour-blind person, rather than applying the same logic for everyone. In addition, different types of colour-blindness (deuteranopia, protanopia, tritanopia) make it hard to come up with one scheme that fits all. There are a couple of browser plugins and scriptlets for this purpose - e.g. http://daltonize.appspot.com/ http://daltonize.appspot.com/ At kenHub (working with John Cupitt, the creator of ruby-vips), we've also created an implementation of the daltonize algorithm for ruby/rails that does this server-side. see https://github.com/kenhub/shikimo https://github.com/kenhub/shikimo (we are hoping to use this soon on our anatomy atlas, so colour-blind people can more easily distinguish between highlights and colour-coded structures)