Pattern fills instead of color?

[fshore@towson.edu]

For bar charts for categorical variables, is it possible to use different pattern fills (like choices found in Word under “shape format”), rather than color? This would be good for colorblind students and also so that you can see distinctions easily should you use B&W printing.

[Bill Finzer]

Thanks for this question. No, CODAP doesn’t have a way to pattern fill a bar chart. One reason for this is that the rectangle of a bar chart is actually made of a collection of stacked rectangles, one for each case. (You can see this if you click on a row in the case table or a point in some other graph.)

However, we are currently rebuilding CODAP from the ground up and improving accessibility. So your question nudges us to think carefully about bar charts both for color blind users and for printing.

Bill

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