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Make figures and presentations that are friendly to Colorblind people (2002)

jfly.uni-koeln.de

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Re: Make figures and presentations that are friendly to Colorblind people (2002)

#21

Post by kop316 »

ljf wrote: post #17
kop316 wrote: post #16

As a person with more severe color blindness/deficiency than most, I guess I'll ask the question: is it actually a big deal? I ask because for me, I really don't think about being colorblind, and colorblindness becomes an issue maybe a few times a year? But I'm also sensitive to the fact that I may be a bad example too (maybe I don't run into presentations where it is apparent? Or I just think the person made bad col…

While I fail most colour blindness tests, I rarely notice it in my like. My wife notes that I mistake dark green and brown, and also some shades of grey as brown. I also find that pink and light grey 'stobe' for me. But aside from failing colour blindness tests, I've never found it impacts my life. I can see traffic signals and can identify most colours, so my kids don't believe I really am colour blind.

Heh, I have seem that strobing effect, but only in very specific shades of blue.

Re: Make figures and presentations that are friendly to Colorblind people (2002)

#22

Post by sethammons »

Tangential: if you or someone you know is red-green color blind, just this week, we bought my dad a pair of EnChroma colorblind glasses and, at 69, he welled up as he saw, for the first time, shades of green around him and saw red cars going down the road. Truly the greatest gift we could have gotten for him.

Re: Make figures and presentations that are friendly to Colorblind people (2002)

#23

Post by mpetroff »

junon wrote: post #12

Question for color blind users: Does testing with the various color emulation tools (such as those provided by inspector tools) properly emulate the real thing? It always seems like people (including me) trust them at face value but I've never heard either way if they're actually helpful in creating color-blindness aware UIs. Of course it would always be preferable to test with real users with real disabilities, but…

The simulation technique [1] currently used by the Firefox / Chrome dev tools is reasonable, so it's definitely much better than not checking for color vision deficiency accessibility at all. Ideally, color should only be used for progressive enhancement; if your UI can be used in grayscale, it's probably fine.

However, the method originally used by both browsers, which is also used by some other tools, had no scientific provenance and produced clearly incorrect results, so one needs to be careful about this sort of thing in general.

[1] https://doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2009.113

Re: Make figures and presentations that are friendly to Colorblind people (2002)

#24

Post by mpetroff »

For those interested, I've done some recent research on this topic [1], which tries to find cycles of colors that optimize both accessibility for color vision deficiencies, using simulations and minimum perceptual distances, and aesthetics, using crowd-sourced survey data.

[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.02270

Re: Make figures and presentations that are friendly to Colorblind people (2002)

#25

Post by convolvatron »

mpetroff wrote: post #23
junon wrote: post #12

Question for color blind users: Does testing with the various color emulation tools (such as those provided by inspector tools) properly emulate the real thing? It always seems like people (including me) trust them at face value but I've never heard either way if they're actually helpful in creating color-blindness aware UIs. Of course it would always be preferable to test with real users with real disabilities, but…

The simulation technique [1] currently used by the Firefox / Chrome dev tools is reasonable, so it's definitely much better than not checking for color vision deficiency accessibility at all. Ideally, color should only be used for progressive enhancement; if your UI can be used in grayscale, it's probably fine. However, the method originally used by both browsers, which is also used by some other tools, had no scient…

colorblind person. making sure things look ok in greyscale is excellent advice. for me perceptual difference in intensity are most of what my visual system pays attention to...color only if I try.

most of the the colored interface are hugely garish, and the massive intensity differences actually make it really hard to read.

and conversely if two indicator colors are the same brightness and you need me to distinguish between them, we're going to struggle.

Re: Make figures and presentations that are friendly to Colorblind people (2002)

#26

Post by kop316 »

bradrn wrote: post #19
kop316 wrote: post #16

As a person with more severe color blindness/deficiency than most, I guess I'll ask the question: is it actually a big deal? I ask because for me, I really don't think about being colorblind, and colorblindness becomes an issue maybe a few times a year? But I'm also sensitive to the fact that I may be a bad example too (maybe I don't run into presentations where it is apparent? Or I just think the person made bad col…

I’m mildly colourblind: I find it difficult to distinguish red/green, but can still do it under the right conditions. On the whole, I agree that colourblindness doesn’t really affect my life, in that for the most part it doesn’t cause me any significant difficulties. But I have a feeling that this is only because I’ve gotten used to it, and that it does affect me — just in ways that I don’t notice. Most relevantly fo…

> , I agree that colourblindness doesn’t really affect my life, in that for the most part it doesn’t cause me any significant difficulties. But I have a feeling that this is only because I’ve gotten used to it, and that it does affect me — just in ways that I don’t notice.

Thats pretty much how I feel about it. It doesnt seem to affect me at all, but maybe its because i dont think about it and i am used to it.

Re: Make figures and presentations that are friendly to Colorblind people (2002)

#27

Post by pge »

junon wrote: post #12

Question for color blind users: Does testing with the various color emulation tools (such as those provided by inspector tools) properly emulate the real thing? It always seems like people (including me) trust them at face value but I've never heard either way if they're actually helpful in creating color-blindness aware UIs. Of course it would always be preferable to test with real users with real disabilities, but…

In the case of colorblindness, the incidence rate is about 1 in 10 men (x chromosome gene so it affects far more men than women), so it’s reasonably likely you could find a tester among your peers if you ask around.

Re: Make figures and presentations that are friendly to Colorblind people (2002)

#28

Post by danShumway »

convolvatron wrote: post #25
mpetroff wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The simulation technique [1] currently used by the Firefox / Chrome dev tools is reasonable, so it's definitely much better than not checking for color vision deficiency accessibility at all. Ideally, color should only be used for progressive enhancement; if your UI can be used in grayscale, it's probably fine. However, the method originally used by both browsers, which is also used by some other tools, had no scient…

colorblind person. making sure things look ok in greyscale is excellent advice. for me perceptual difference in intensity are most of what my visual system pays attention to...color only if I try. most of the the colored interface are hugely garish, and the massive intensity differences actually make it really hard to read. and conversely if two indicator colors are the same brightness and you need me to distinguish…

One thing I worry about here that I should probably do more research on: is colorblindness like turning off or lessening a color channel? Because I know for some graphical work I've done, if I do a pure grayscale by just turning down the saturation or something, the contrast might be good, but if I turn off one color channel, the contrast/intensity differences sometimes seem to vanish.

I do grayscale testing, but I worry that when I do grayscale tests for stuff like game graphics where there aren't clear contour lines, that I'm getting a false sense of confidence -- I worry that the test might not be an accurate representation of the level of contrast a colorblind person will actually see if they sit down in front of the non-grayscale version. Is that something I should be worried about, or am I just misunderstanding how colorblindness works?

If I do a grayscale test and the interface still seems clear/usable, how confident should I actually be that you'll be able to use the non-grayscale interface?

Re: Make figures and presentations that are friendly to Colorblind people (2002)

#29

Post by convolvatron »

danShumway wrote: post #28
convolvatron wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

colorblind person. making sure things look ok in greyscale is excellent advice. for me perceptual difference in intensity are most of what my visual system pays attention to...color only if I try. most of the the colored interface are hugely garish, and the massive intensity differences actually make it really hard to read. and conversely if two indicator colors are the same brightness and you need me to distinguish…

One thing I worry about here that I should probably do more research on: is colorblindness like turning off or lessening a color channel? Because I know for some graphical work I've done, if I do a pure grayscale by just turning down the saturation or something, the contrast might be good, but if I turn off one color channel, the contrast/intensity differences sometimes seem to vanish. I do grayscale testing, but I w…

part of the issue here is while the physical mechanism of colorblindness is quite clear, the perceptual implications are inherently subjective.

so I don't know how much my advice is relevant to colorblind people in general.

but greyscale is very good start. after that - if you want to show contrast at least for me there are whole areas of the palette that you don't want to take more than one color from. for example the whole red/green/brown/tan/orange space for me is a giant wash. purple looks nice, but don't set it against blue unless its substantially different in saturation.

a secondary issue is that some color combinations I find confusing/distracting. that is my brain can't really settle on the color(s). so for example casual games sometimes just don't work, because its going to take me a second or two to even decide if I can combine these two dots...and I may not even be able to focus on anything else because there is the loud flashing thing on the screen (flashing because I'm 'trying on' colors to see if they fit)

if there is too much color going on I'll probably just reject the whole activity if I can.

sadly I've seen games with a 'colorblind mode' which shows that someone really cared - but it was no more usable than the default more or even worse.

but low saturation UIs with good color choices do look better than mono. I have some form of blue/yellow, but certain choices of blue and yellow are really quite readable and even look pleasant (shrug).

but I wouldn't flail too much. as other people have mentioned its not really that life-changing. if I have to use your garish interface to book an appointment it doesn't really matter...but if you're going to go in and colorize my emacs with nice round hex values I wish you would have the courage to post your address so I can come visit you and have a talk.

that was all over the place. hope it helped.

Re: Make figures and presentations that are friendly to Colorblind people (2002)

#30

Post by danShumway »

kqr wrote: post #14
agent327 wrote: post #9

One tool I've found really helpful in this regard is Color Oracle ( https://colororacle.org/ ). It lets you see what your presentation (or software) looks like to someone who is colorblind. I've used that to tune our software to be useable by colorblind individuals.

Another neat trick is that Android (under developer settings) have alternative colour space emulation settings. Combined with a smartphone camera, you can view anything you find in the real world with a colour deficiency. Just turn on the emulation and point the camera at anything. Look through the live screen.

Oh, that's really clever. I knew about Android's color modes, but I never thought to combine it with the camera before.
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