Color Vision

Robert Hammerton’s Color Blindness Research Projects

by Zack Ybara

Robert Hammerton is a multimedia practitioner who’s currently blogging about his products and how he develops them. His current personal research project (PRP to him) involves the investigation of how color blind individuals experience surfing the web. His aim is to raise the issue of just how much web developers today consider the needs of color blind Internet users.

During the course of his study (which apparently began a mere few weeks ago), he has come across a free colorblind filter tool which he plans to use to illustrate how web pages look like to users with different types of color blindness. This colorblind filter is also currently under development, and the owner would appreciate feedback.

Presently, Robert insists that while color options for websites currently exist, having multiple color filters for websites or browsers will provide complete accessibility for color blind individuals. This is important, he says, as it would result in better user experience and improved company-user interaction.

We’ll be keeping a close eye on Robert’s work in the days to come.

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.

More Accessibility Tools For Web Designers

By Zack Ybara

A few days ago we featured Cal Henderson’s Color Vision Palette as a tool for web designers who want to ensure that their websites can be viewed by everyone, including those of us with color vision deficiency. We applaud Cal Henderson’s efforts in making the Internet more color blind friendly, and we fervently hope the trend continues to pick up speed down the line.

Well, here’s more good news. VirtualHosting.com recently posted a collection of freeware accessibility tools for web designers. These freebies tackle various Internet accessibility issues, such as contrast problems, web browser incompatibilities (if you know how some websites show up differently in different browsers), and of course, tools to make websites more accessible to color blind individuals.

Web designers will have a field day trying out every one of the 25 tools presented. They’re all effective and helpful – and best of all, they’re free. Check them out here.

Simulate color blindness on the fly on your Mac

This looks to be very interesting and unfortunately I don't have a Mac to try this on (I'm a Mac user presently in a PC world yearning to be free :-).  So I welcome comments from anyone that's tried this program.

Sim Daltonism is a color blindness simulator for Mac OS X. It filters in real-time the area around the mouse pointer and displays the result — as seen by a color blind person — in a floating palette.

Since there are many types of color blindness, Sim Daltonism allow you to choose the one you want to see. Available filters are:

• Monochromacy (complete).
• Monochromacy (partial). Complete or partial inability to distinguish colors. This color blindness is pretty rare.
• Protanopia (complete red-green).
• Protanomaly (partial red-green).  Complete or partial inability to see using long-wavelength sensitive retinal cones making hard to distinguish between colors in the green-yellow-red section of the spectrum.
• Deuteranopia (complete red-green).
• Deuteranomaly (partial red-green). Complete or partial inability to see using middle-wavelength sensitive retinal cones making hard to distinguish between colors in the green-yellow-red section of the spectrum. This is the most common form of color blindness.
• Tritanopia (complete blue-yellow).
• Tritanomaly (partial blue-yellow). Complete or partial inability to see using short-wavelength sensitive retinal cones making hard to distinguish between colors in the blue-yellow section of the spectrum.

Link: Sim Daltonism.

The Psychology of Color in Web Design

Lala Balatan, in this succinct post, makes a good case as to why web-designers who don't understand how humans perceive color and patterns may be cutting out a wide swath of users. By "understanding the basics of cognitive psychology around color and patterns," Ballatan states, web designers "ensure the user-friendliness of a certain site and must strive to reach the widest range of users possible."  Further,

Being user-friendly means that our website design will not only cater for normal sighted Internet users but also to those partially sighted, blind or estimated 8-10% of men with red-green colour blindness.

Link: Web Design: The Psychology of Color in Web Design.

Top tools for Web 2.0 accessibility

Poorgeek from SiliconSoul reports that he's just come back from the IDEAS 2007 Conference which

"is an annual two day conference presented by GSA that focuses on Section 508, a law that requires accessibility for all for products paid for by the Federal government. This covers everything from Web sites to copy machines."

After attending a panel entitled "How Accessible is Web 2.0?", Poorgeek asks: 

"I wonder how hard it would be to have your screen be displayed to appear as someone who has tunnel vision, is color blind, and any of the other forms of visual disabilities."

Well, I can't speak to the issues of tunnel vision or other forms of visual disabilities out side of color blindness.  But there are some interesting tools out there that web designers can use to address the needs of over 10,000,000 people in the U.S. alone that have some form of color vision deficiency. Here is a list of the top tools I know of:

• ColorBlind Web Page Filter
• ColorBrewer
• ColorDoctor
• VisCheck

Link: siliconsoul » The simple ramblings of a geek.