Heidi Cool posted a reply on Quora today to a question about Web accessibility.
One of the sites she referenced in her reply was a colour blindness simulator.
I thought I would try the simulator using an image that has a lot of blue in it.
Here’s the original image, followed by a screen grab of how the simulator suggested a person with that particular sight deficiency would see it.
Of course, if you suffer from this deficiency, I am not sure how it is going to look to you.
What I know is that after seeing the red yolks, I have sympathy for anyone who has this deficiency. But maybe my sympathy is misplaced? After all, I have no idea what the reaction of such a person would be to red yolks.
Perhaps they don’t seem ‘red’ at all. What would the reference be? How would a person born that way be able to communicate meaningfully with a ‘normal’ person about their reaction to such colour perceptions?
It’s a mystery.
If you are interested in other aspects of Web accessibility, here is Heidi’s complete answer to the question.
5 replies on “Colour Blindness and the Web”
Always interesting to ponder. They don’t know anything else. People born totally blind, who get vision later in life … I’ve read somewhere many of them tend to get very depressed.
LikeLike
How strange to be depressed about being able to do something new. Maybe the imagined world is sweeter than the ‘seen’ one? I recall seeing part of a TV programme about a woman who regained the sight she lost as a child. For months after the operation she couldn’t make proper sense of what she saw.
LikeLike
It’s very hard, not to say impossible, to fathom what it would be like. The depression part applied only to the ones who were born totally blind … never had seen anything.
LikeLike
Yes, I got that. I thought maybe they got depressed because the world was ‘less’ than they had imagined? It’s a bit like religion – is the mundane really capable of being God given? Is ordinary so ordinary? That kind of thing.
LikeLike
Yes. They probably found it ugly.
I don’t think the ordinary is all that ordinary. Dizzying thought, though…
LikeLiked by 1 person