{"id":737,"date":"2007-06-17T13:12:54","date_gmt":"2007-06-17T12:12:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.roumazeilles.net\/news\/en\/wordpress\/2007\/06\/17\/color-blindness-and-software-specification\/"},"modified":"2007-06-17T17:17:22","modified_gmt":"2007-06-17T15:17:22","slug":"color-blindness-and-software-specification","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.roumazeilles.net\/news\/en\/wordpress\/2007\/06\/17\/color-blindness-and-software-specification\/","title":{"rendered":"Color-blindness and software specification"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><!--adsense#top_post_right-->Do you happen to know that 5% of all male population is actually affected by some form of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Color_blindness\">color-blindness<\/a> (females are much less prone to it). It means that plenty of activities that tend to rely on <font color=\"red\">color<\/font> identification by the user is significantly flawed for about 2-3% of the user population. This can become a real issue for companies willing to support equal employment opportunities for all.<\/p>\n<p>In software, if this was not reason enough to think seriously about it, we should also think about the impact of printing onto black &#038; white printers (they are color-blind too and this affect 100% of B&#038;W printer users). Most of the problems could be alleviated by following some simple rules that should be part of any software requirements.<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->My proposal:<\/p>\n<p><!--adsense#square250--><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Color coding is usable provided that you type in the color name inside the colored cell. For example compare the following and what would happen if the colors were missing:\n<ul>\n<li>\n<div style=\"width: 45px; background-color: #00FF00\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div style=\"width: 45px; background-color: #FF0000\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div style=\"width: 45px; background-color: #6666FF\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div style=\"width: 45px; background-color: #00FF00\">Green<\/div>\n<div style=\"width: 45px; background-color: #FF0000\">Red<\/div>\n<div style=\"width: 45px; background-color: #6666FF\">Blue<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Think color in shades of grey: Light pink, light yellow and light green will probably be similar; Prefer red, light yellow and dark green (normal, light and dark will print better).<\/li>\n<li>Use redundant information to complement color information. For example, in colored graphs, lines may be mixing color-coding and dotted-line-coding and other visual cues not relying on color.\n<ul>\n<li>Difficult to print and read:<br \/><img src='https:\/\/www.roumazeilles.net\/news\/en\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/graph_color_only.PNG' alt='Graph with color only - difficult to read' \/><br \/><img src='https:\/\/www.roumazeilles.net\/news\/en\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/graph_color_only_grey.png' alt='Graph converted to grey shades only' \/><\/li>\n<li>Better:<br \/><img src='https:\/\/www.roumazeilles.net\/news\/en\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/graph_color_plus.PNG' alt='Graph with colors and visual cues - Easier to read' \/><br \/><img src='https:\/\/www.roumazeilles.net\/news\/en\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/graph_color_plus_grey.png' alt='Better graph (with visual cues) converted to grey scale' \/><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>When you test the application (or better when you validate the specification), you should always have a test with a screen used in black &#038; white or shades-of-grey mode. Things that you may not easily notice will quickly pop to your eyes (like in the examples above).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If you start incorporating these in your requirements, your software will be better, your communication will be more efficient (remember that most color-blind people either do not know it or do not tell about it).<\/p>\n<p>And I have seen many people improve significantly this at the individual level just by looking at their own PowerPoint charts or Excel graphs to improve them in a matter of seconds. Why not try it now?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Do you happen to know that 5% of all male population is actually affected by some form of color-blindness (females are much less prone to it). It means that plenty of activities that tend to rely on color identification by the user is significantly flawed for about 2-3% of the user population. This can become [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13000,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,54,45,20,35,14,3,40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-color-laser-printer","category-graphics-display","category-hr","category-inkjet-printer","category-sciences","category-social-issues","category-software","category-spreadsheet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roumazeilles.net\/news\/en\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roumazeilles.net\/news\/en\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roumazeilles.net\/news\/en\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roumazeilles.net\/news\/en\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roumazeilles.net\/news\/en\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.roumazeilles.net\/news\/en\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roumazeilles.net\/news\/en\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roumazeilles.net\/news\/en\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roumazeilles.net\/news\/en\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roumazeilles.net\/news\/en\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}