4 ms·

Color Blindness Myths and Misunderstandings

22 points by toni 16y ago

jasondavies 16y ago
My red-green colour blindness doesn't affect me on most Web sites. Sometimes the designer decides to make all links dark red (indistinguishable from black for me) and removes the underlines. Now, that really is annoying! I suppose I should just use a custom stylesheet to override those cases.
jstirrell 16y ago
I'm pretty damn color blind, but luckily I've never experienced a website colored in such a way that it's been a major inconvenience. I do frequently hear misconceptions about color blindness though ("so you see in black and white?").
- eru 16y ago
  Those colour-blindness simulator pages should be better known by the masses.
RoyG 16y ago
I had a color blind client once. He kept rejecting my duotone artwork because it didn't 'look right.' When he finally admitted he was color blind, I asked him 'why are you trying to make color decisions when you have this condition?' and he said, 'because i'm in charge here.'
- ljf 16y ago
  yes, but don't forget, if it didn't work for him it also might not work for possibly 10% of male population, so I reckon he made the right call. yes he should have been more up front, but he was right.
  - RoyG 16y ago
    You mischaracterized the situation; the baseline for a colorblind audience is legibility, not quality. In other words, you make it so they can see the difference, but not the beauty, which would actually be impossible. Also, there are many different forms of colorblindness which in toto add up to 10%, however, there is not, iirc, one case which the entire colorblind audience would see as one. Actually, once this was put out in the open, and discussed, I was allowed to sign off on the artwork, and the project was completed successfully.
    - ljf 16y ago
      true, but colours such as grey and pink together clash horribly for me, where as they seem quite popular in some print advertising at the moment. you might not be able to see how bad they look, but I can ;) I know what you are saying, and again agree that he should have been upfront with you. but as a sign off point in the company I work for I would not sign off something which did not work for me, and would explain why to the designer. I forget which tests I fail, but its all of them except the really rare blue one. its never stopped me producing visually exciting and arresting sites for children (and all as accessible as possible, I work for a public broadcaster) which all ensure contrast levels that work as widely as possible for colour blindness (and are also as accessible as possible for screen readers, users with aspergers etc.).
      - ljf 16y ago
        I should also say that we have an accessiblity document all designs must follow, so anyone working with us will be aware that they need to consider such things before they start. I'll see if I can link to a copy.
aplusbi 16y ago
I used to work for a video game company, and we produced a puzzle game that involved heavy use of colors. I pushed very hard to include a "color blind mode" which added shapes to the tiles. An interesting side effect is that you could play faster in color blind mode, because we used 2D sprites for those pieces instead of 3D models. Without the animations you could move faster. We were also working on this other "game" (a PDA for the NDS) which included a bunch of mini-games, one of which heavily relied on identifying colors. Unfortunately I was not able to convince them to make a color blind version. The game was targeted at girls who are far less likely to be color blind than boys, and the game was only a very small portion of the product overall.
thingie 16y ago
I hope that chart and visualization makers will get the memo. It's insane to try to distinguish some nearly identical (to me) colors in a legend of some silly line chart. And that's simply way too common.
twymer 16y ago
I think the only time it becomes more than just inconvenient is in games and data. I love thinking the monster is green so it should be easy when instead it's yellow and I suffer a quick death. Also cool to have to interpret data that all looks to be colored the same. Recently I argued at work that I couldn't see the color difference between nodes with problems and healthy ones, they never changed it...
pkulak 16y ago
I'm reasonably color blind (I couldn't get any of those test blots), and I think I have better night vision. At least better than my wife. At night, in our room when it is very dark, I can describe details of objects that she can't even see at all. May not have anything to do with being color blind, but it makes sense if I have rods than cones.
golgo13 16y ago
One of my co-workers is color blind. Of course, I did a little with him in SQL Server. He said -- This line (green) 'and this line' (red) look almost the same. And SELECT (blue) OBJECT_ID (Magenta) Look nearly the same! Crazy talk!
Nick_C 16y ago
For me, this issue affects my language choice. I can pretty much get used to any language, so I don't participate in the language wars very much. I get used to a language's idiosyncrasies and work around them. However, I very much dislike coding in PHP and the main reason is the colours of the documentation website. For some reasons, the website maintainers have chosen to display code examples as orange text on grey background. For me, this is extremely hard to read, I have to really concentrate on the text and sort of narrow my eyes to make it out. Instead of being able to quickly flick through the docs, I have to concentrate on each and every piece of code. It's very exhausting. As a result, I go out of my way to avoid PHP.

22 points by toni 16y ago

My red-green colour blindness doesn't affect me on most Web sites. Sometimes the designer decides to make all links dark red (indistinguishable from black for me) and removes the underlines. Now, that really is annoying! I suppose I should just use a custom stylesheet to override those cases.

jstirrell 16y ago

I'm pretty damn color blind, but luckily I've never experienced a website colored in such a way that it's been a major inconvenience. I do frequently hear misconceptions about color blindness though ("so you see in black and white?").

eru 16y ago
Those colour-blindness simulator pages should be better known by the masses.

RoyG 16y ago

I had a color blind client once. He kept rejecting my duotone artwork because it didn't 'look right.' When he finally admitted he was color blind, I asked him 'why are you trying to make color decisions when you have this condition?' and he said, 'because i'm in charge here.'

ljf 16y ago
yes, but don't forget, if it didn't work for him it also might not work for possibly 10% of male population, so I reckon he made the right call. yes he should have been more up front, but he was right.
- RoyG 16y ago
  You mischaracterized the situation; the baseline for a colorblind audience is legibility, not quality. In other words, you make it so they can see the difference, but not the beauty, which would actually be impossible. Also, there are many different forms of colorblindness which in toto add up to 10%, however, there is not, iirc, one case which the entire colorblind audience would see as one. Actually, once this was put out in the open, and discussed, I was allowed to sign off on the artwork, and the project was completed successfully.
  - ljf 16y ago
    true, but colours such as grey and pink together clash horribly for me, where as they seem quite popular in some print advertising at the moment. you might not be able to see how bad they look, but I can ;) I know what you are saying, and again agree that he should have been upfront with you. but as a sign off point in the company I work for I would not sign off something which did not work for me, and would explain why to the designer. I forget which tests I fail, but its all of them except the really rare blue one. its never stopped me producing visually exciting and arresting sites for children (and all as accessible as possible, I work for a public broadcaster) which all ensure contrast levels that work as widely as possible for colour blindness (and are also as accessible as possible for screen readers, users with aspergers etc.).
    - ljf 16y ago
      I should also say that we have an accessiblity document all designs must follow, so anyone working with us will be aware that they need to consider such things before they start. I'll see if I can link to a copy.

aplusbi 16y ago

I used to work for a video game company, and we produced a puzzle game that involved heavy use of colors. I pushed very hard to include a "color blind mode" which added shapes to the tiles. An interesting side effect is that you could play faster in color blind mode, because we used 2D sprites for those pieces instead of 3D models. Without the animations you could move faster. We were also working on this other "game" (a PDA for the NDS) which included a bunch of mini-games, one of which heavily relied on identifying colors. Unfortunately I was not able to convince them to make a color blind version. The game was targeted at girls who are far less likely to be color blind than boys, and the game was only a very small portion of the product overall.

thingie 16y ago

I hope that chart and visualization makers will get the memo. It's insane to try to distinguish some nearly identical (to me) colors in a legend of some silly line chart. And that's simply way too common.

twymer 16y ago

I think the only time it becomes more than just inconvenient is in games and data. I love thinking the monster is green so it should be easy when instead it's yellow and I suffer a quick death. Also cool to have to interpret data that all looks to be colored the same. Recently I argued at work that I couldn't see the color difference between nodes with problems and healthy ones, they never changed it...

pkulak 16y ago

I'm reasonably color blind (I couldn't get any of those test blots), and I think I have better night vision. At least better than my wife. At night, in our room when it is very dark, I can describe details of objects that she can't even see at all. May not have anything to do with being color blind, but it makes sense if I have rods than cones.

golgo13 16y ago

One of my co-workers is color blind. Of course, I did a little with him in SQL Server. He said -- This line (green) 'and this line' (red) look almost the same. And SELECT (blue) OBJECT_ID (Magenta) Look nearly the same! Crazy talk!

Nick_C 16y ago

For me, this issue affects my language choice. I can pretty much get used to any language, so I don't participate in the language wars very much. I get used to a language's idiosyncrasies and work around them. However, I very much dislike coding in PHP and the main reason is the colours of the documentation website. For some reasons, the website maintainers have chosen to display code examples as orange text on grey background. For me, this is extremely hard to read, I have to really concentrate on the text and sort of narrow my eyes to make it out. Instead of being able to quickly flick through the docs, I have to concentrate on each and every piece of code. It's very exhausting. As a result, I go out of my way to avoid PHP.