- Types of Color-Blind Tests Updated (.pdf format)
- As Seen by the Color Blind shows you what those with color blindness are seeing.
- Check My Colors Check the accessibility of the colors on your website by Giovanni Scala.
- Colour Combinations Tester for Web Developers
- Compare Six Color Samples Tool
- "Color Contrast for Better Readability" by Tom Osborne, VP, Design, Viget Labs, LLC.
- Colorable a color palette combination contrast tester.
- Colour Contrast Check by Jonathan Snook.
- Color Contrast Tester by Joe Dolson.
- How to Use Color Blind Friendly Palettes to Make Your Charts Accessible By Rachel Cravit, AUG 21, 2019
- Color Deficient Vision Simulation in the Web Designer's Color Card and Chart, by Christine Rigden, formerly of British Telecommunications (BT).
- Color Safe Empowering designers with beautiful and accessible color palettes based on WCAG Guidelines of text and background contrast ratios. By Donielle Berg & Adrian Rapp
- "‘The Eye of the Beholder’—Designing for Colour-Blind Users", (.pdf) by Christine Rigden, British Telecommunications Engineering, Vol. 17, Jan. 1999
- Color Blindness Types provides definitions and examples of type of color blindness. PDF format (.pdf)
- Colorblind Web Page Filter Enter the URL resource to be viewed, and a color filter to be applied to that resource. If you only use one filter, use the grayscale filter which will not only point out potential problem areas, but will also let you see more clearly which areas the filter is unable to process. Updated
- Colblindor is all about color vision deficiency. It presents all you ever wanted to know, learn and try out concerning color blindness. Please feel free to browse the site and find online color blindness tests, some tools to check color names or many interesting facts.
- Colour Contrast Analyser [From TPGi (formerly The Paciello Group).] Updated
- Color Contrast Checker from WebAIM provides the ability to lighten and darken your color combinations slightly to find acceptable contrast levels.
- Color Contrast Analyzer: The Luminosity Colour Contrast Ratio Analyser allows you to check the contrast of two colors using the WCAG 2.0’s luminosity contrast algorithm.
- Color Laboratory The color laboratory allows you to select colors and see how they appear next to one another and in various foreground / background combinations. It also allows you to see those colors as they might appear to color-blind users.
- Color Oracle is a free color blindness simulator for Window, Mac and Linux. It takes the guesswork out of designing for color blindness by showing you in real time what people with common color vision impairments will see.
- Colour Vision Easy to use tool to quickly see color deficiencies with color palettes for Protanomaly (low red), Protanopia (no red), Deuteranomaly (low green), Deutanopia (no green), Tritanomaly (low blue), Tritanopia (no blue), Typical Monochromatic, ATypical Monochromatic.
- "Computer Color Matters -Is your computer color blind?" from Color Matters® Computers
- Easy RGB Find similar colors in different collections.
- Tips for Designing for Colorblind Users
- Fonts excellent resource for information about fonts from WebAIM
- Effective Color Contrast
- Lighthouse International: Effective Color Contrast – Designing for People with Partial Sight and Color Deficiencies offers color guidelines for the Web. (.pdf)
- HTML Color conversions, color harmonies, shades, tints, tones,
- HTML Color Code Picker
For example: a soft green https://html-color.codes/#16c68b - HTML Color Mixer tool that creates a range between two colors.
- Lighthouse International: Making Text Legible – Designing for People with Partial Sight offers basic guidelines for making effective legibility choices that work for nearly everyone. (.pdf)
- Vischeck Test your Web design for how it looks to various color blind impairments. Run Vischeck on your own image files or run Vischeck on a Web page: on your desktop or online.
- Visibone Information about colour blindness, with colour cards simulating colour spectrums as they appear to those with colour deficient vision.
- Web-Based Color Vision Test EnChroma Color Blindness Test. Results may vary depending on display quality. This test is not a medical diagnosis. By taking this test you understand and accept that your test results may be anonymously recorded on our server for quality assurance purposes. Please consult an eye care professional for more information regarding color vision deficiency.
- Website Tips: Color Charts provides several web-safe color charts by VisiBone’s Bob Stein, by Lynda Weinman, and Daxassist. There are also resources to many more charts, and articles and tips on color and design, color psychology and meanings.
- Wellstyled Web-Safe Colors Tool incredibly helpful online color scheme tool to help select eye-stopping color schemes.
Tag: blind users
Vision
Visual accessibility problems involve blindness, low vision, and color-blindness.
Reference Books and Resources
There are several excellent books related to vision. See the suggested reading list for general information and detailed reference books for your library.
Find more resources using the Areas of Focus Vision category search.
Relevant News
Macular Degeneration
"Quality of Life Improves in Patients with Macular Degeneration: Duke Ophthalmology, Duke University School of Medicine, "Researchers at the Duke Eye Center have determined that patients with age-related macular degeneration (AMD) experience significant improvement in their quality of life following a surgical procedure called "macular translocation with 360 degree peripheral retinectomy" (MT360). AMD is an eye disease that may lead to vision loss in the central region of a person's visual field, a defect that can seriously impact a patient’s quality of life."
"UCSB Studies Link Alzheimer’s Disease, Macular Degeneration," by Josh Braun, Staff Writer. Published Wednesday, May 28, 2003. Issue 135 / Volume 83
Accessible Technology
The American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) Tech's product evaluations offer objective, comprehensive accessibility reviews of products for people who have lost some or all of their vision. AFB Tech has evaluated a wide variety of products, including cell phones, blood glucose meters, insulin pumps, insulin pens, blood pressure monitors, office copiers and faxes, kitchen and home appliances, voting machines, and others. Their reports are available online at AFB AccessWorld®: Technology and People Who Are Blind or Visually Impaired. For example, see their many published reports on accessible cell phones.
Making Documents Accessible to the Blind
The American Council of the Blind (ACB) has a page about "Best Practices and Guidelines for Large Print Documents used by the Low Vision Community" that is authored by the Council of Citizens with Low Vision, International (CCLVI), an Affiliate of the American Council of the Blind in Arlington, VA. These guidelines were compiled by persons with low vision to assist in the production of the large print documents that they, themselves read.
Zoom for Low Vision
Wednesday, 15th June 2005 – By Gez Lemon. An article about creating alternative stylesheets for people with low vision. This discusses zooming text and color contrast. "Zoom for Low Vision"
Blind engineering student 'reads' color-scaled weather maps using Cornell software that converts color into sound
January 21, 2005: Victor K. Wong, a Cornell University graduate student from Hong Kong who lost his sight in a road accident at age seven, is helping to develop innovative software that translates color into sound. "Color is something that does not exist in the world of a blind person," explains Wong. "I could see before, so I know what it is. But there is no way that I can think of to give an exact idea of color to someone who has never seen before." The inspiration for using image-to-sound software came in early 2004 when Wong had problems reading color-scaled weather maps of the Earth's upper atmosphere—a task that is a necessary part of his doctoral work in "space weather," which attempts to predict weather patterns high over the equator for use by Global Positioning System and other satellite communications. Read more… "Blind engineering student 'reads' color-scaled weather maps using Cornell software that converts color into sound"
Library Services for the Blind
State libraries for the blind in Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, New Hampshire, and Oregon, along with the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS), the National Library of Congress, other regional and state libraries, and the CNIB Library in Canada provide free audiobook library services to the visually impaired; requested books are mailed out (at no cost) to library patrons. Founded in 1996, Assistive Media of Ann Arbor, Michigan was the first organization to produce and deliver spoken-word recordings of written journalistic and literary works through the Internet to serve people with visual impairments.
The Blind Can See with Their Tongues
Update: Source: University of Montreal news release, June 2, 2004: An eye on the tongue. More…
http://www.iforum.umontreal.ca/ForumExpress/Archives/vol3no3en/article02_ang.html
2001—A Danish study found that people who were born blind can learn to see by having electrical impulses applied to their tongue. This research may also benefit other groups of disabled patients with brain injuries or diseases such as epilepsy, dementia, blood clots in the brain or patients who have had surgery where a portion of the brain has been removed. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison are developing a tongue-stimulating system that translates images detected by a camera into a pattern of electric pulses that trigger touch receptors. That people can decode nerve pulses as visual information when they come from sources other than the eyes shows how adaptable, or plastic, the brain is, says Wisconsin neuroscientist and physician Paul Bach-y-Rita, one of the device’s inventors. "You don't see with the eyes. You see with the brain," he contends. An image, once it reaches an eye's retina, "becomes nerve pulses no different from those from the big toe," he says. To see, people rely on the brain's ability to interpret those signals correctly. More… [this article is continued but only available to subscribers to ScienceNews. See https://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20010901/bob14.asp] (no longer available as of 28 February 2014) See also November 28, 2004: BehindTheMedspeak: BrainPort – See with your tongue and hear and touch as well.