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Does anyone have any insight into how tools for simulating color blindness would fit into workflows? For example, in this case presumably the QA team play in d

Does anyone have any insight into how tools for simulating color blindness would fit into workflows? For example, in this case presumably the QA team play in different modes and provide feedback about things which aren't going to work, but that is a very different universe than web or mobile app design.

nemomarx 2y ago
could you use it during user validation testing? see if they can distinguish buttons etc?
- AlotOfReading 2y ago
  Most colorblind people are so-called "anamolous trichromats" who have 3 functioning color channels, but one or more has some kind of deficiency. Instead of being completely unable to distinguish UI elements, they might simply take longer at it, or more likely to spend 10 extra minutes hunting for the red key the boss dropped in the grass. That's more subtle to test.
  - bongodongobob 2y ago
    Yep, exactly. I know cardinals are red and they look obviously red to me. Hard as hell for me to spot one in a tree though, this was the first sign when I was a kid. "What do you mean you can't see it!?"
    - brookst 2y ago
      I still remember by my surprise somewhere around age 15 when I learned that other people could tell a dead tree from a live one just be color.
    - david-gpu 2y ago
      > I know cardinals are red and they look obviously red to me. Hard as hell for me to spot one in a tree though Does it mean that trees also look reddish to you? I don't understand how cardinals can look "obviously red" and still blend in with the foliage, which average people would consider "obviously green". My mental model for red-green color blindness is that most reds and most greens are hard to tell apart because they largely look like shades of yellow.
      - bobthepanda 2y ago
        At least for me (I am red green colorblind), I have the mental model to help me know culturally what is "red" (an apple) and what is "green" (a pine tree) but I start having issues the moment red and green start appearing next to each other in which case they just look like muddy different shades if I squint very hard. It is hard to explain because much of our modern signage and whatnot has been designed with colorblindness in mind; most "green" traffic lights, for example, are green-whitish specifically to address colorblindness. But not all of it; when I used to work in IT (as in literal computer diagnostics) it was pretty impossible for me to ascertain any particular diagnostic light.
        skinkestek 2y ago
        Something similar here: - Part of my colorblindness seems to be a language thing, especially as a non native speaker of English: is that status light "amber" or is it just on? (here it it obviously helps if there is a full rack and one of them sticks out) - another part is about recognizing the colors of tiny dots (lanterns, specks on the floor). I can sometimes clearly see the same color if there is a cm^2 or a m^2 of it, no problem, but a tiny dot of the same color looks generic grey or generic yellow - and another part, probably related to the first one, is just noticing: for example the mixed waste bins are (very dark) green but until my wife thought I joked I didn't notice. Now it is very obvious - then there is the obviously actual color blind part: when a doctor hands me the color splatters with images I don't see every one of them and on some I see the wrong numbers - another obvious clue there is something I actually cannot see: when I use colorblind simulation in digital image manipulation programs it feels like nothing happens - bonus 1: my house is clearly (IMO) green, but sometimes this has other people including people with supposedly full color vision confused, which means either I see the green because it isn't drowned in another nuance that other people see or there is something even funnier going on with my color vision - bonus 2: It feels like it is never pitch dark for me, as long as I am outdoors. (Caves, bunkers and technical rooms without lights can be though.)
      - refulgentis 2y ago
        I've done work that, for better or worse, required creating a color space. It to enable dynamically generated UI palettes that also were numerically verifiable as accessible. The way I model color blindness for a quick & cheap heuristic is, remove all hue-ness and saturation-ness. i.e. make the scene black and white. That elides the exact compression in hue that is experienced by an actual individual (i.e. is it just red on green that's a problem? tetrachromate or x or y or z? at what severity (this is ~unmeasurable)) and leaves you with the raw problem, that there isn't sufficient contrast between the two colors. Even though this elides information about the individual's exact experience, it is crucial for how to think about color, because even if color blindness didn't exist, it still would affect all of us A cheap example of that is #FF0 text on a white background. Yellow is absurdly close to white (IIRC 97 L* versus 100 L*), so you can never quite focus on the yellow, it feels like its slippery and you get a headache trying to read. (w/the tree x cardinal example, red is ~43? L*. A natural green w/o an absurd sunlight behind it would be somewhere around 55 L*. You want about 40 L* for good contrast, here we have ~10 L*, and once you lose the hue/saturation delta due to color blindness, it's quite difficult for the bird to "jump out", as it were. you could still find it scanning)
ktnt 2y ago
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nemomarx 2y ago

could you use it during user validation testing? see if they can distinguish buttons etc?

AlotOfReading 2y ago
Most colorblind people are so-called "anamolous trichromats" who have 3 functioning color channels, but one or more has some kind of deficiency. Instead of being completely unable to distinguish UI elements, they might simply take longer at it, or more likely to spend 10 extra minutes hunting for the red key the boss dropped in the grass. That's more subtle to test.
- bongodongobob 2y ago
  Yep, exactly. I know cardinals are red and they look obviously red to me. Hard as hell for me to spot one in a tree though, this was the first sign when I was a kid. "What do you mean you can't see it!?"
  - brookst 2y ago
    I still remember by my surprise somewhere around age 15 when I learned that other people could tell a dead tree from a live one just be color.
  - david-gpu 2y ago
    > I know cardinals are red and they look obviously red to me. Hard as hell for me to spot one in a tree though Does it mean that trees also look reddish to you? I don't understand how cardinals can look "obviously red" and still blend in with the foliage, which average people would consider "obviously green". My mental model for red-green color blindness is that most reds and most greens are hard to tell apart because they largely look like shades of yellow.
    - bobthepanda 2y ago
      At least for me (I am red green colorblind), I have the mental model to help me know culturally what is "red" (an apple) and what is "green" (a pine tree) but I start having issues the moment red and green start appearing next to each other in which case they just look like muddy different shades if I squint very hard. It is hard to explain because much of our modern signage and whatnot has been designed with colorblindness in mind; most "green" traffic lights, for example, are green-whitish specifically to address colorblindness. But not all of it; when I used to work in IT (as in literal computer diagnostics) it was pretty impossible for me to ascertain any particular diagnostic light.
      - skinkestek 2y ago
        Something similar here: - Part of my colorblindness seems to be a language thing, especially as a non native speaker of English: is that status light "amber" or is it just on? (here it it obviously helps if there is a full rack and one of them sticks out) - another part is about recognizing the colors of tiny dots (lanterns, specks on the floor). I can sometimes clearly see the same color if there is a cm^2 or a m^2 of it, no problem, but a tiny dot of the same color looks generic grey or generic yellow - and another part, probably related to the first one, is just noticing: for example the mixed waste bins are (very dark) green but until my wife thought I joked I didn't notice. Now it is very obvious - then there is the obviously actual color blind part: when a doctor hands me the color splatters with images I don't see every one of them and on some I see the wrong numbers - another obvious clue there is something I actually cannot see: when I use colorblind simulation in digital image manipulation programs it feels like nothing happens - bonus 1: my house is clearly (IMO) green, but sometimes this has other people including people with supposedly full color vision confused, which means either I see the green because it isn't drowned in another nuance that other people see or there is something even funnier going on with my color vision - bonus 2: It feels like it is never pitch dark for me, as long as I am outdoors. (Caves, bunkers and technical rooms without lights can be though.)
    - refulgentis 2y ago
      I've done work that, for better or worse, required creating a color space. It to enable dynamically generated UI palettes that also were numerically verifiable as accessible. The way I model color blindness for a quick & cheap heuristic is, remove all hue-ness and saturation-ness. i.e. make the scene black and white. That elides the exact compression in hue that is experienced by an actual individual (i.e. is it just red on green that's a problem? tetrachromate or x or y or z? at what severity (this is ~unmeasurable)) and leaves you with the raw problem, that there isn't sufficient contrast between the two colors. Even though this elides information about the individual's exact experience, it is crucial for how to think about color, because even if color blindness didn't exist, it still would affect all of us A cheap example of that is #FF0 text on a white background. Yellow is absurdly close to white (IIRC 97 L* versus 100 L*), so you can never quite focus on the yellow, it feels like its slippery and you get a headache trying to read. (w/the tree x cardinal example, red is ~43? L*. A natural green w/o an absurd sunlight behind it would be somewhere around 55 L*. You want about 40 L* for good contrast, here we have ~10 L*, and once you lose the hue/saturation delta due to color blindness, it's quite difficult for the bird to "jump out", as it were. you could still find it scanning)

ktnt 2y ago

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