Color Vision

A Cure for Color Blindness May Be Found

2009-09-17T05:51:42-07:00

Researchers at the University of Washington report in the journal Nature that they have been able to restore full color vision to adult monkeys born without the ability to distinguish between the colors red and green.

According to National Public Radio, scientists who study color vision are calling the study dazzling.

Until now scientists thought that this sort of therapy was not possible. However, the University of Washington team were able to introduce therapeutic genes into the light-sensing cells at the back of the eye of adult male squirrel monkeys, who are born red-green colorblind.

Furthermore, the monkeys were treated over two years ago and their improvement in color vision has remained stable since.

Link: 'Gene cure' for colour blindness [BBC]

Maps Made Convenient For Color Deficient Individuals

2009-02-14T09:44:03-08:00

Guest Post by Kristine [lizbeth_laila@yahoo.com]

Come to think of it, it never occurred to me that maps might just become very unhandy for people like me. Imagine the frustration I have to go through by reading a map and suddenly halting in the middle of the road because I can’t understand where the last road ‘went to’.

Fortunately, Cynthia A. Brewer made an excellent idea over eight years ago when she began creating maps that can accommodate both color blind individuals and those with normal vision. She recommended using map colors which are far away from the confusion lines like blue, light green, whitish green, gray magenta and dark green, since these colors are the least likely to look like any other color to a color blind individual.

I sure hope this catches on with the rest of the world's map-making industries. Like most people, I'd like to see Paris at least once in my life.

Contact Lenses that Correct Color Vision Deficiency: Fact or Fiction?

2009-01-25T19:37:20-08:00

Guest Post by Kristine [lizbeth_laila@yahoo.com]

Our good friend, Daniel Flück of Colblindor, has written about contact lenses that might actually correct certain color vision deficiencies. Is this the scientific breakthrough that we've all been waiting for?

Color vision deficiency is hereditary in nature. By this, it cannot be corrected by surgery or medications. However, special contact lenses meant to “correct” color deficiency have been developed, and can enhance color sensation in color blind individuals (but doesn’t improve overall color perception). These special contact lenses are tinted and it’s usually placed in your dominant eye with a different colored lens on the other eye (same color tints will not work).

Unfortunately, the contact lenses have many flaws. These contact lenses actually enhance color perception (depending on what type you have) and there is vast improvement in acing Ishihara tests (but not applicable in lantern and color arrangement tests), but they are very costly. Secondly, wearing them may pose an inconvenience to some, and it may even be dangerous to wear them in certain conditions (wearing them while driving, for instance, makes it difficult to judge speed and distance). Third, certain color areas may be enhanced but it diminishes color sensitivity in other color areas as a result.

I guess we'll have to keep waiting for that big scientific breakthrough.

Link: Improving Color Vision with Lenses for the Colorblind

15 Tools For Those Who Are Colorblind and Those Who Are Not

2009-01-03T10:20:31-08:00

Fellow colorblind blogger JNvB, who is based in the Netherlands (www.kleurenblindheid.nl), has developed a list of 15 tools (software and websites) that can help those who are colorblind as well as show those with normal vision how the world appears to colorblind people.

My colleague in colorblindness, Daniel Flück (www.colblindor.com), has posted an English version of the list on his blog, Colblindor.

JNvB is trying to get as much exposure as possible to the post on Coblindor in the hope that readers will return with comments on software or tools that he may have missed.

The list includes tools in the following areas:

Assistive software for colorblind people
Colorblindness simulation software
Online colorblindness simulations
Color recognition software
Online color recognition

Link: 15 Tools If You Are (Not) Colorblind

Rejected Because You Have Color Vision Problems?

2008-11-28T07:58:14-08:00

Guest Post by Kristine [lizbeth_laila@yahoo.com]

There are several career limitations for color deficient individuals like me. I’ve been through the agony of being rejected because of my ‘limitations’. It killed me to find out only recently that I was color vision deficient after taking an Ishihara test as part of a job qualification.

Daniel Flück, author of the Colblindor website, knows how I feel all too well, as he writes about the plight of color blind jobseekers everywhere. I believe that these restrictions apply only in careers that deal with life and death, such as emergency medicine, firefighting, police work, and the military. I perfectly agree why these jobs require perfect vision and color perspective, but civilian jobs ought to be more lenient.

Being rejected outright because of a “vision problem” is probably the worst part of not getting a job. I hope that employers eventually learn more about color blindness and how judging applicants by their visual health could deprive them of a sizeable portion of the talent pool.

Color Deficiency in the Field of Medicine

2008-10-20T11:49:27-07:00

Guest Post by Kristine [lizbeth_laila@yahoo.com]

Will color vision deficiency affect an otherwise promising career in the medical field?

Daniel Flück, author of the Colblindor website, posted about color deficiency problems in the field of medicine. Although Flück said that color vision deficient doctors do as well as those with normal color vision, there are still some limitations as to what they can do. A slight misidentification of skin colors like jaundice or rashes can spell the difference between saving a patient or losing him. Read more about his observations here.

I believe in the saying: when there’s a will, there’s a way. I would suggest practicing on distinguishing changes in hues and brightness. Although I’m not practicing under the field of medicine, as a color blind individual, I think these will give you an idea on where to start honing your skills as a doctor.

Color Vision Deficiency Limitations

2008-10-10T18:39:25-07:00

Guest Post by Kristine [lizbeth_laila@yahoo.com]

Aimee Amodio discussed color deficiency limitations in terms of career and educational growth in the families.com website. First: career. Our daily lives are enlivened by colors, and color-deficient individuals like me have certain ‘limitations’ when it comes to career opportunities. These are just one of those times that I can’t seem appreciate colors because my "perspective" differs from everyone else's.

And, as she had suggested, I actually have my mom help out in color-coordinating my clothes (she keeps me off the "fashion don'ts" list). I’ve been a little "off" with traffic lights, but memorizing where the red, yellow and green lights are located makes it a little bit easier.

It is true that a child’s potential may be hindered because of his incapability to determine certain colors. However, if the color deficiency is detected earlier, the child may be taught alternative ways in identifying these colors – and who knows, it might just be enough to help him get through art class.

Link: Living with Color Blindness

Today's Video Games Are Still Too Visual

2008-10-02T15:25:45-07:00

Guest Post by Kristine [lizbeth_laila@yahoo.com]

Video games are more appreciated visually than with any other sense. There’s so much information that needs to be processed by our eyes, and most games use colors both to create spectacular visual effects and differentiate between important visual elements during gameplay. Some games, for instance, involve matching colored blocks.

However, Tim McDaniel, a color blind reader of the Ars Technica blog, brought up some pretty intriguing matters. For one, he is a big fan of Battlefield 2142. He enjoys the realistic action and fast gameplay. However, he also finds the game frustrating because of his inability to distinguish between red, green, yellow and brown flags well enough. In a game that depends on capturing the enemy flag, this proves to be a huge disadvantage.

Game designers should realize that a good portion of the gaming population is color blind, and their game design can draw the line whether a color-blind gamer will buy their game or not. Alternative options such as changing certain colors, hues or contrasts might be a good idea for starters. An option for on-screen callouts for certain objects/players on the field will also be helpful.

McDaniel and millions of other color-blind gamers will appreciate it if gaming companies started to consider such issues in their game designs.

Link: Color-blind gamers: common. Developer awareness? Minimal

Surfing From A Color Blind Perspective

2008-09-28T10:33:40-07:00

Guest Post by Kristine [lizbeth_laila@yahoo.com]

This article in the Colourlovers blog tackles how certain websites look to color blind individuals. In this blog, the author posted several popular websites and showed how differently these websites looked to color blind individuals and those with normal vision. Interestingly enough, he also posted this Color Blind Web Page Filter where it filters out colors according to the type of color deficiency an individual has.

Being color blind, I naturally couldn't see how well the Filter worked, so I asked one of my web designer friends to try it out for me. While we tested some familiar websites on the Filter, he commented that he never thought the Google logo could look so dull.

He then realized that he could unconsciously be making his websites a little hard to view to certain color blind individuals, and began testing his sites through the filter to make sure it was readable to every viewer, color blind or not.

All-in-all, I'm glad to know that the plight of color blind web users is getting a lot of exposure these days. I hope that means websites will start to look better and better for everyone.

Driving And Red-Green Color Vision Deficiency

2008-09-15T13:27:47-07:00

Guest Post by Kristine [lizbeth_laila@yahoo.com]

I stumbled upon this blog posted by Steve Pavlina, who suffers from color vision deficiency. On his blog, he posted some interesting topics of his encounters with some minor problems in dealing with everyday life, including the common difficulties with reading traffic lights.

The nightmare of it all! Dealing with three traffic lights is already hard enough to understand for someone with color vision deficiency – how much worse would it be if a certain intersection's traffic lights only had two?

This age-old problem needs to be addressed somehow, as most color blind individuals have trouble recognizing red and green from each other. This poses considerable danger, particularly when an individual drives through a red light.

Click here to read about other common problems that red-green color vision-deficient individuals go through.

Link: Steve Pavlina.com - Colorblindness