Color blindness

[GregSands]

While gently debating the role of color in LabVIEW, I started wondering about how friendly LabVIEW is to colorblind people.  Likely around 10% of LabVIEW programmers are colorblind, and LV does make an increasing use of color, certainly from its early monochromatic days.  Are there any here who can give a colorblind point of view?  Are there any gotchas which need some care?

The gentle debate relates to the potential use of color to define filetype, but a similar discussion could revolve around the definition of wire colors for objects.

[jcarmody]

I spent some time teaching a colorblind colleague a few years ago.  He managed to learn despite my instructions to "connect the green wire"...  I don't know how he did it except the colors did appear to his eyes as different shades.

[johnsold]

GregS,

As one who learned he was color blind when my mother asked me why I had colored the horse green and the grass brown, I will be glad to contribute to this discussion.

1. I did not read the linked thread because I have not yet started using classes. (It is on my list).

2. I have been using LV since version 1.2.  When the first color versions came out, I had my boss get me a larger monochrome monitor rather than spending more money on a smaller color monitor.  There were some battles over mapping color to gray scale! When both colors rendered the same gray level things disappeared.

3. I know integer datatypes have blue wires.  I can tell some others apart but have no idea what the colors are.

4. Colored objects of small numbers of pixels in one dimension are hard to discriminate.  Something the size of a color box constant is about the smallest object where colors are readily apparent.  Wires, borders, text: not easy to tell what color they are.

5. Graphs: Some horrible choices have been made.  The default color for the second plot (red???) is nearly invisible and not readily distinguished from the default grid color, whatever that is.  I almost always turn on dots on points if I have to use that color.  One good thing is that several dot styles are available. 

6. Adding more colors will likely reduce the ability of those of us who are color blind to distinguish wires by color.  Normal color vision gives you ~ 3 dimensional vector space. Red-green color blindness reduces that to ~2D.  The ability to distinguish small differences, especially in the red component, is significantly reduced.

I am willing to spend some time reviewing proposed color schemes, if that would be of any value.

Lynn

[RobCole]

I can add a little bit to the idea of gotchas with colors. From having developed a GUI for a color-blind customer.

Beware of error indicators that have red backgrounds and black lettering. These can not be read or are very hard to read.

Beware of indicators that rely on color to inform the user of something. Add text to say what's happening.

Test in B&W. Windows used to fade to monochrome when you pressed CTRL-ALT-DEL. That was very helpful for a quick check. I miss that.

I'm sure if I think on it more, other things will come to mind.

Rob

[johnsold]

Good points, Rob.

Lynn

[GregSands]

Lynn, those are very interesting comments - especially 4 & 6 seem particularly relevant to both the LabVIEW programming interface and to GUI design.  It's easy just to design for ourselves, and not think the the end-user may have a totally different perception.

[altenbach]

During the online presentation this morning, the sites vischeck was mentioned. It allows uploading of images and will simulate how they would look to a color blind person. There are also many examples.

[johnsold]

Thanks.  I had never heard of that site.

Lynn

[JackDunaway]

---

@altenbach wrote:

During the online presentation this morning, the sites vischeck was mentioned. It allows uploading of images and will simulate how they would look to a color blind person. There are also many examples. 

---

Color Scheme Designer is a color wheel that allows simulation of different types of color blindness. It also gives estimates on what percentages of the population have which type of color blindness.

[Harold_Timmis]

I am color blind. When I took the test I could only see the first number in the circle it was out of 25 or so circles, so I think it is safe to say I am color blind, but that has never really hindered my LabVIEW experience.