Student Trove
A study planner that works with colour blindness
Timetables and planners lean on colour more than almost any other kind of app. Here is why that breaks, and what Study Planner does about it.
Why planner apps fail colour blind students
Study apps encode an unusual amount of meaning in colour. Subjects are distinguished by colour. Task urgency runs red to amber to green. Grade indicators are red for failing and green for passing. Attendance warnings are colour-coded. Workload heatmaps are colour and nothing else.
Almost all of that sits on the red–green axis, which is exactly the axis affected by the most common forms of colour vision deficiency — around one in twelve men and one in two hundred women. For those users a colour-coded timetable is not harder to read; it conveys no information at all. The usual workaround is memorising which position each subject occupies, which defeats the point of the colour coding entirely.
The fix is not a single greyscale toggle. Different deficiencies need different palettes, because a pairing that separates cleanly under one collapses under another.
Four colour vision palettes
Study Planner ships four palettes, each chosen for a specific deficiency. Selecting one replaces the app's colour scheme globally — timetable, calendar, dashboard, grade summaries, study plans, subject colours and search results all follow it.
Deuteranopia — green-weak
The most common form. Built on a blue–orange pairing, since the blue–yellow axis is preserved when green sensitivity is reduced.
Protanopia — red-weak
Same blue–orange basis, tuned for reduced red sensitivity, where reds also appear darker than they do to typical vision.
Tritanopia — blue-weak
Much rarer, and needs a different approach: blue and orange are a poor pairing here, so the palette moves to teal and a deeper orange.
Achromatopsia — no colour vision
A greyscale palette that separates elements by lightness alone, so that everything remains distinguishable without any hue information.
The principle behind the first two is worth stating plainly, because it generalises well beyond this app: blue and orange survive red-green deficiency, red and green do not. Where colour has to carry meaning, that pairing is the safe one.
The rest of the accessibility settings
- Text scaling from half size to double size, controlled inside the app and independent of your device-wide setting — so you can enlarge the planner without enlarging everything else on your phone. Layouts adapt as text grows rather than clipping.
- High contrast, which strengthens borders and text contrast for low-vision use and for reading a screen in direct sunlight.
- Reduce motion, which shortens or removes transition animations. This matters for vestibular disorders and motion sensitivity, and the app also respects the system-level reduce-motion setting.
None of these are behind a paywall, and none require an account.
Colour is never the only signal
Palettes are a mitigation, not a solution. The more durable principle is that anything important should be legible without colour at all — which is what WCAG's use-of-colour criterion asks for, and it benefits far more people than it was written for.
In practice that means attendance warnings say how many absences remain rather than only turning amber, grade indicators show the percentage next to any colour treatment, and status is carried by text and position as well as hue. If you find a place in Study Planner where colour is the only thing distinguishing two states, that is a bug worth reporting — the address is studenttrove@gmail.com.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a study app for colour blind users?
Student Trove Study Planner includes four colour-vision-deficiency palettes — deuteranopia, protanopia, tritanopia and achromatopsia — that replace the app's colour scheme throughout, including the timetable, calendar, grade indicators and charts. It also offers high contrast, text scaling and reduce-motion. It is free on Android, in the browser and on Windows.
Why are timetable and planner apps hard to use with colour blindness?
Because they lean heavily on colour as the only way of distinguishing things. Subjects are told apart by colour, task urgency is red-amber-green, grade indicators are red for failing and green for passing, and attendance warnings are colour-coded. Red-green deficiency is the most common form and affects roughly one in twelve men, which is precisely the axis those conventions rely on. When red and green are indistinguishable, a colour-coded timetable conveys no information at all.
What is the difference between deuteranopia, protanopia and tritanopia?
They describe which type of cone cell is affected. Deuteranopia is reduced or absent sensitivity to green and is the most common form. Protanopia affects red, and additionally makes reds appear darker than they do to typical vision. Tritanopia affects blue and yellow and is much rarer. Achromatopsia is the complete absence of colour vision. They need different palettes because a colour pairing that separates cleanly under one deficiency can collapse under another.
Which colours work best for colour blind users?
Blue and orange, as a general rule. The blue–yellow axis is preserved in the common red-green deficiencies, so a blue-and-orange pairing stays distinguishable where red-and-green does not. Student Trove's deuteranopia and protanopia palettes are built on exactly that pairing. Colour alone is never sufficient though: differences that matter should also be carried by text, position, shape or icon so that the information survives regardless of palette.
Can I make the text bigger in Study Planner?
Yes. Study Planner has its own text scaling control that ranges from half size to double size, independent of your device-wide setting, so you can enlarge text in the planner without changing every other app on your phone. Layouts adapt as text grows rather than clipping or overlapping.
Does the colour blind mode apply everywhere in the app?
Yes. The selected palette drives the app's colour scheme globally rather than being limited to one screen, so the timetable, calendar, dashboard, grade summaries, study plans, subject colours and search results all use it. A mode that only fixed the timetable while leaving grade indicators red and green would not solve the problem.