Color Vision

A Cure for Color Blindness May Be Found

Researchers at the University of Washington report in the journal Nature that they have been able to restore full color vision to adult monkeys born without the ability to distinguish between the colors red and green.

According to National Public Radio, scientists who study color vision are calling the study dazzling.

Until now scientists thought that this sort of therapy was not possible. However, the University of Washington team were able to introduce therapeutic genes into the light-sensing cells at the back of the eye of adult male squirrel monkeys, who are born red-green colorblind.

Furthermore, the monkeys were treated over two years ago and their improvement in color vision has remained stable since.

Link: 'Gene cure' for colour blindness [BBC]

15 Tools For Those Who Are Colorblind and Those Who Are Not

Fellow colorblind blogger JNvB, who is based in the Netherlands (www.kleurenblindheid.nl), has developed a list of 15 tools (software and websites) that can help those who are colorblind as well as show those with normal vision how the world appears to colorblind people.

My colleague in colorblindness, Daniel Flück (www.colblindor.com), has posted an English version of the list on his blog, Colblindor.

JNvB is trying to get as much exposure as possible to the post on Coblindor in the hope that readers will return with comments on software or tools that he may have missed.

The list includes tools in the following areas:

• Assistive software for colorblind people
• Colorblindness simulation software
• Online colorblindness simulations
• Color recognition software
• Online color recognition

Link: 15 Tools If You Are (Not) Colorblind

Etre’s Colour Blindness Simulator

By Zack Ybara

Etre, a user experience company in London, has a free tool on their website that simulates what an image would look like to individuals with protanopia, deuteranopia, and tritanopia. This Colour Blindness Simulator lets web designers upload JPEG images of up to 1000 x 1000 pixels, then compare how the image appears to a viewer with normal vision against another with color vision deficiency.

Etre’s Colour Blindness Simulator may be viewed here.

Despite being “a work in progress,” Etre’s Colour Blindness Simulator has earned nods from web developers worldwide, and has recently been featured in the latest book by Snub Communications’ Craig Grannell, The Essential Guide To CSS and HTML Web Design. Craig describes Etre’s Colour Blindness Simulator as a useful tool for weeding out common design errors.

Etre is on the mark in acknowledging that more than 1 out of every 20 individuals worldwide suffer from a form of color blindness. With their track record, you can bet we’ll be hearing more about Etre and their accessibility tools down the line.

Are You Color Blind?

Guest post by Zack Ybara

One in every twelve people in the world is color blind. It’s a pretty high statistic, don’t you think? It might make you wonder why you don’t hear about it too often. Perhaps you might be color blind and not know it?

Color blindness isn’t a disease – it’s more of a genetic thing. It runs in families, so if you have a relative who’s color blind, it means you (and the rest of your family) have higher chances of being color blind.

So how do you know you’re color blind? There are many types of color blindness out there, and you may not even know about it (and what you’re missing out on) until you check yourself. The easiest way to find out is to take the test developed by Dr Shinobu Ishihara in 1912.

Kate Schneider presents a simple Ishihara test in her blog. She also tells us about Australian Cricket player, Chris Rogers, who manages to play despite being color blind. With all these developments that make sports and many other aspects of life more accessible to us, I guess the future is colorful no matter how we see it.

You're color blind? Fascinating!

Paul Martin's blog has a guest contribution from a pal at the Florida Hospital College of Health Sciences who reflects on his own color blindness and others' fascination with it.

I have discovered that those around me are endlessly fascinated with it—especially designers. So, to you I provide this public service message on color blindness.

The public service message is a terrific visual primer on what a color blind person is likely to see in every day life.  The post has LOTS of comparison images to illustrate for normal sighted people what things look like for color vision deficient folks. And like the person posting, all the images look the same to me. His thesis:

Please give a second thought before designing something that requires me to tell colors apart to get your point.

Link: Blindness | Critique Wall.com.

Josh Zimmerman, who is color blind, has some nice commentary about how he sees things (and also links to the above referenced post).