I've found this website to be useful for seeing what an image would look like to a color blind person:
http://www.etre.com/tools/colourblindsimulator/
We are Colorblind
21–30 of 53 posts
Re: We are Colorblind
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
A lot of people don't even understand what color blind really is Too true. Two otherwise sensible, college-educated friends of mine once insisted that they'd be able to tell how my eyesight is different if I sat down and drew what I see out of the window. Using pencil crayons that presumably pierced through my colourblindness. I literally could not find a way to explain to them why it made no sense. "No, but we'll co…
Pardon my ignorance, but why wouldn't this work? Suppose you were red-green colorblind, and there was an apple tree with green "Granny Smith" apples outside your window. You can't tell if the leaves on the tree are red or green, but using common sense, you guess that they are green, and color them with the green pencil. You can't tell if the apples are red or green, but using common sense, you guess that they are red…
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Re: We are Colorblind
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pardon my ignorance, but why wouldn't this work? Suppose you were red-green colorblind, and there was an apple tree with green "Granny Smith" apples outside your window. You can't tell if the leaves on the tree are red or green, but using common sense, you guess that they are green, and color them with the green pencil. You can't tell if the apples are red or green, but using common sense, you guess that they are red…
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There's also the fact that the ability to discern two colours depends on the two shades involved, and the shades that nature presents are probably different to the ones chosen by Faber-Castell. Also, when I was a kid I could tell the purple pencil from the blue if I held them together, but had trouble if I had just one on its own. (Still true today but I don't come across colour pencils so often...)
Re: We are Colorblind
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
A lot of people don't even understand what color blind really is Too true. Two otherwise sensible, college-educated friends of mine once insisted that they'd be able to tell how my eyesight is different if I sat down and drew what I see out of the window. Using pencil crayons that presumably pierced through my colourblindness. I literally could not find a way to explain to them why it made no sense. "No, but we'll co…
Pardon my ignorance, but why wouldn't this work? Suppose you were red-green colorblind, and there was an apple tree with green "Granny Smith" apples outside your window. You can't tell if the leaves on the tree are red or green, but using common sense, you guess that they are green, and color them with the green pencil. You can't tell if the apples are red or green, but using common sense, you guess that they are red…
Sorry, I edited my post to reflect the fact that I misrepresented the scenario. Though it started as a discussion about colour-blindness, it developed into a more general "what if my blue is your red" discussion. In that scenario, the red and greens on the tree would be matched exactly to the reds and greens on the pencils- there's no way to know if I'm seeing something different.
Re: We are Colorblind
#25A JavaScript widget, browser plugin, or Photoshop filter to colorblindify, in various types, a webpage so that designers can check for usability would be useful. EDIT: Actually, what would be more useful are colorblind OS X color profiles and an easy way to switch between them.
Xscope has a colorblind mode: http://xscopeapp.com/guide#screens
Re: We are Colorblind
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
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There's also the fact that the ability to discern two colours depends on the two shades involved, and the shades that nature presents are probably different to the ones chosen by Faber-Castell. Also, when I was a kid I could tell the purple pencil from the blue if I held them together, but had trouble if I had just one on its own. (Still true today but I don't come across colour pencils so often...)
Actually I am exactly the same. Inspired by all of this, I took an online test:
http://www.opticien-lentilles.com/daltonien_beta/new_test_da...
Which seems to suggest that I am green-blind, but not red. With 1/7 wickline, but I have no idea what that means (suspect it has been lost in translation somewhere)
Re: We are Colorblind
#27A JavaScript widget, browser plugin, or Photoshop filter to colorblindify, in various types, a webpage so that designers can check for usability would be useful. EDIT: Actually, what would be more useful are colorblind OS X color profiles and an easy way to switch between them.
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Re: We are Colorblind
#28Diclaimer: I have full-color vision, but with color blindness there are (roughly) two dimensions of color, whereas most people have three (and a black and white photograph has one). What this means is that with 1D color, you can sort all of the colors you see into a line -- dark to light. With 2D color, you can sort all of the colors you see on a flat plane. With 3D color, you require stacking colors. Now, there's pl…
That's interesting about tetrachromats. I knew a lady when I was a kid who claimed she couldn't 'see' an image on TV, that it was all just garbage to her. I'd always just assumed she was either crazy or making some weird kind of statement. Maybe not!
Re: We are Colorblind
#29I remember reading that some people who are color blind have an exceptional sense of contrast such that camouflage which fools normal sighted people is immediately obvious to some color blind people:
http://www.colblindor.com/2012/03/16/camouflage-test-for-non...
With that in mind, are there any simulations of color blindness that take this into account, actually capturing the source image differently using a modified sensor? Most simulations are essentially taking a photoshop filter to an image that was captured on an RGB sensor.
Re: We are Colorblind
#30This is interesting, but let me give you the perspective of someone who is red-green colorblind (though, I just noticed I can't see anything in this image that's supposed to test for Deuteranopia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Colorblind4.png - but testing for colorblindness on a computer monitor is far from accurate).
It's not that big of a deal.
Really. On the list of things to worry about in your web or software development, I'd place "worrying about how colorblind people see my website" pretty darn near the bottom.
Here's a comprehensive list of the ways that my disability has caused me to suffer:
* I'm really awful at picking strawberries and cherries. Dark red fruit against green foliage does not stand out at all to me the way it seems to for other people. Before she knew I was colorblind, my mother just thought I was lazy and/or eating all the fruit I was supposed to be picking.
* Occasionally, I'll buy/wear clothes that don't match. Because I think they're brown, but really they're a subtle shade of green.
* Sometimes, I'll call something brown or grey or blue that's really red or green, and people will find it hilarious.
* When people learn that I'm colorblind, they spend several minutes pointing at things and saying, "Can you see that? What color is it?".
Really, that's about it.
I vary rarely come across things on my computer screen where the functionality is impeded by my inability to distinguish color. Though, I've got to admit, the BBC's football table example is a pretty great example: http://wearecolorblind.com/example/bbc-online-football-table...
I suspect that things are different for people with different levels of colorblindness, but then you're talking about ~1% or less of the population.