Show HN: Automatic detection of non-colorblind safe colors
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Re: Show HN: Automatic detection of non-colorblind safe colors
#2Really cool. I showed the a11y geeks in our design group this and they're already thinking about approaches they could take to embed this into the CI process for our UI libraries.
Re: Show HN: Automatic detection of non-colorblind safe colors
#3An interesting question might be, which is the best approach: having designers alter their designs (which means everyone is affected), vs. client side settings that alter the appearance just for those affected?
I just am not so fond of the idea that all designs must be compromised (both aesthetically and functionally) for everyone else, if there are solutions that work as well without affecting everyone.
Re: Show HN: Automatic detection of non-colorblind safe colors
#4I have a legit question. Do colorblind people use some extension in their browser? This post gave me the idea that maybe some extension could show them the warnings and some options to scale the colors in an appropiate manner. My first idea was to try using it in development, to check how colorblind people see our apps and provide a solution. Do you have any further plans or ideas with this? (It's an interesting topic, but I'm not very informed)
Re: Show HN: Automatic detection of non-colorblind safe colors
#5Would love for someone to do a similar analysis on the Overwatch colorblind modes (and why they don't work and Blizzard needs to improve them)
Re: Show HN: Automatic detection of non-colorblind safe colors
#6Now that I've detected my color ramp is inadequate, where can I find a good one? Am I limited to greyscale or other single-hue ramps? Do I need multiple color ramps for deuteranopia vs protanopia?
Re: Show HN: Automatic detection of non-colorblind safe colors
#7An interesting question might be, which is the best approach: having designers alter their designs (which means everyone is affected), vs. client side settings that alter the appearance just for those affected? I just am not so fond of the idea that all designs must be compromised (both aesthetically and functionally) for everyone else, if there are solutions that work as well without affecting everyone.
Disclaimer: I'm colorblind.
There are SO MANY designs that use indistinguishable colors for no good reason at all. It's perverse that League of Legends uses blue and purple as its team colors—literally anything else (blue and red is my vote) would be easier for many colorblind users to tell apart. And a lot of heatmaps use gradients that go from blue to purple or from red to green…why‽
I'm willing to admit that the very occasional design might Really Just Work Better with particular colorblind-incompatible colors, but I feel like I'm being affected by it awfully frequently. The primary point of design is to communicate information; why restrict a substantial minority from easy access to that information?
Re: Show HN: Automatic detection of non-colorblind safe colors
#8I kind of wish the OS Vendors were not asleep at the wheel, and had features to address these issues as a 'built-in' value proposition for their products.
I mean, it seems to me the sort of thing that a computer ought to know how to deal with, inherently .. and sure, some vendors do make an effort to make these kinds of human differences accessible.
But its just .. well maybe there is a broader malaise with OS vendors, asleep at the wheel, not caring too much about this on the OS level any more. We've moved on and its all web now, I guess.
I say this, as my first thought while reading this article was "surely this is just a hash-table away from being applicable everywhere ..." ..
Re: Show HN: Automatic detection of non-colorblind safe colors
#9Now that I've detected my color ramp is inadequate, where can I find a good one? Am I limited to greyscale or other single-hue ramps? Do I need multiple color ramps for deuteranopia vs protanopia?
Depends, I assume. The original Destiny had color palettes for every type of color blindness iirc, you could select whichever one you wanted. That was a really nice feature for a FPS, where you need to be able to determine allies/enemies at a glance.
If you didn't want to do separate palettes, which I imagine could be a lot of work, you could create your own. I imagine if you varied the tint/shade/tone enough you could (probably?) get a set of colors (with different hues) that would be differentiable across all forms of colorblindness.
Disclaimer: I'm not a designer _at all_. Somewhat on topic, my favorite quick tool for colors is colorhexa dot com. At the bottom of each color page they have a color blindness simulator.
Re: Show HN: Automatic detection of non-colorblind safe colors
#10I have a legit question. Do colorblind people use some extension in their browser? This post gave me the idea that maybe some extension could show them the warnings and some options to scale the colors in an appropiate manner. My first idea was to try using it in development, to check how colorblind people see our apps and provide a solution. Do you have any further plans or ideas with this? (It's an interesting topi…
I'm colorblind; I don't; and I haven't even looked into it. I have a lot of little heuristics I learned in the real world to help cope with not being able to distinguish certain colors. If they're not good enough, I can usually either just ignore it, ask someone nearby for help (or text my sister or girlfriend), or use the web inspector to change things around.