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Comment by atoav | Hacker News Reader

KeepassXC (open source password manager application) uses colour to make passwords more readable. They use one color for each "class" of character: uppercase, lowercase, numbers, symbols, ...

This is a extremely simple idea, but especially with random passwords this helps a lot even if the font is already hyperlegible.

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Bitwarden also uses an unambiguous font with 3 colors (default for letters, blue for numbers, red for symbols); I love it. It baffles me when any password-focused software allows itself to render characters in an ambiguous font without any color differentiation.

You can also add a list of exclusions easily in the KeepassXC password generator. I do because when you type in a long password on a TV remote, or similar interface, and then realise the l1|I were confused it's soooo0 infuriating.

As a colorblind person I hate this idea.

I advocate for accessibility and inclusivity constantly, but not implementing additional measures which are helpful to most due to some not being able to make use of that one aid is not the way to go. Direct your hate elsewhere.

Yeah, why? Because the additional information layer benefits some people? Depending one your type of color-blindness and the choice of colors this might even be an improvement that works for color-blind people.

We are not talking about encoding information only in color (= bad idea), we are talking about encoding information that is already present additionally in the color. And if your app has accessability settings (it should) this would be a thing that you could switch on and off.

It's an additional layer on top of other ones like using a non-ambiguous font, large size display, alternating background shades, character index numbers under each character, etc.

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