Comments on: Testing designs for color-blindness

By: Stef

Stef — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 00:46:58 +0000

And almost two years after my comment theorising on a cure, scientists have successfully used gene therapy to correct colour blindness in monkeys:
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/colortherapy/

Bring on the eye hacking! (Though my apprehension of the eye injections required still stands.)

By: Andy

Andy — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 00:42:37 +0000

I'm guessing that many people who read this blog design for print as well (at least once in a while - branding and all that) so I thought I'd bring up Scribus, an open source multi-platform desktop publishing program. The version I have installed (1.3.4) has a button in the lower right hand corner that shows how your piece will look with various types of colour blindnesses. Also, the colour wheel in the 'Extras' panel can do similar checks. Hope that helps someone!

By: Paveo

Paveo — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 08:24:51 +0000

color oracle, have a little try.

By: Asela

Asela — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 02:29:49 +0000

Sim Daltonism looks useful. I have been using color oracle, worth a look.

By: Ellen

Ellen — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 02:34:03 +0000

Very interesting site. I am a graduate student in Human Factors, teaching an undergraduate course in sensation and perception, and one of my students sent me this link. I’d just like to point out that the term “color blindness” should be reserved for the very rare phenomenon of monchromatism–no color vision at all, either due to brain damage or no functioning cones. Protanopes, deuteranopes, and tritranopes should be referred to as color deficient.

By: Greg Bulmash

Greg Bulmash — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 04:22:14 +0000

@ManxStef, the red contact lens may be a bit extreme. I found a pair of red safety glasses that came with a laser level worked well for me.

When I was putting up shelves in my son’s room (before he was born), I used a laser level and red-tinted safety glasses. The room was painted green and my wife had done some highlights in a complimentary shade of green. When I looked at the wall normally, it looked to be one solid color. When I put on the red-tinted safety glasses… there were the highlights.

By: Joe

Joe — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 13:37:33 +0000

@Zeldman - My former coworker, Eric Puidokas taught me that if you look at the luminosity value of your background and your foreground text color, their values should be at least 30 in difference, and that was a general rule of safely applying color for color-blindness. This might have derived from the 7:1 Contrast Ratio Rule.

By: Steve Cochrane

Steve Cochrane — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 02:18:39 +0000

Sim Daltonism seems like a great tool, but you might want to keep an eye on system performance while it's running. I had all kinds of memory issues when it was open and it was taking over 90% of my CPU seemingly every time it was in view. I've since ditched it and started using Color Oracle, which is nice and simple.

By: Jack Cole

Jack Cole — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 17:53:38 +0000

A technique that might be useful here was announced at MAX - Flash 10's new shader language called Hydra. Shaders could be developed to allow users to adjust content for easier viewing. I could imagine a standard library of shaders being developed for creating sites that would accommodate a variety of sight deficiencies. It's Flash, granted, but maybe this same idea can be ported to web standards with SVG at some point? One application that looks particularly promising is Zeh Fernando's, allowing users to make Threshold adjustments to images on the fly. He includes an example of it (with code) on his site. People

By: Ray

Ray — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 16:01:43 +0000

Thanks Jeffrey. I was happy to test one of my sites and see that there were no problems for colorblind visitors. And my contrast is good too. Color me happy?

The Veen example is very adroit Richard. In my early incarnation as a ‘designer’ I used to rail against the Jakob N advice (blue and underlined!) but these days my links are at least underlined, if not a better shade of blue. I just caved to the advice, but now I see. Smart.

By: Stefan Klose

Stefan Klose — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 10:30:48 +0000

Fujitsu also offers a free set of tools on this purpose. It’s almost a full suite of accessibility testers, but it’s only available for Windows. Give it a try:

http://www.fujitsu.com/global/accessibility/assistance/

By: Webstandard-Team

Webstandard-Team — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 06:24:41 +0000

Another interesting way to test websites for accessibility ( color vision deficiency etc.) is aDesigner a free Software from IBM.

By: John Faulds

John Faulds — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 01:52:01 +0000

aDesigner is a downloadable tool which simulates low vision at different colour deficiency settings.

By: Jim Whitten

Jim Whitten — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 01:26:03 +0000

Thanks to everyone posting here with different experiences and links to the tools as well. Both my parents have some form of color blindness and have often questioned what designers are doing (requiring discussion ranging from color theory to layout). I sincerely appreciate this discussion.

By: ManxStef

ManxStef — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 00:33:22 +0000

@MT & Josh: a single coloured contact lens, usually with a red tint, may help some red-green (deuteranomaly) colour–blind people distinguish reds better. These lenses go by the name “X-chrome”, amongst others. I’ve tried them once and it did make the reds “jump” out in a way I’d never seen before – I’d recommend giving them a go just to experience it – but they’re not a perfect solution by any means, more of a “mind hack”, and won’t give you a good estimate of full-colour vision. (They’re banned for most colour vision testing, such as for pilots or marine use, for instance.)

I’m afraid we’re stuck with colour-blindness until someone comes up with an effective gene therapy solution, which is really only a matter of time. With a little luck, within our lifetimes it’ll be possible to get the disability reversed – I’d imagine it being a similar experience to the laser correction procedure, though I can’t see having stuff injected into your eyeballs being particularly pleasant!