Author Topic: Colour Blind App for Android and iPhone  (Read 2169 times)

Jaded

  • The Codfather
  • Formerly known as Jaded
Colour Blind App for Android and iPhone
« on: 28 January, 2011, 12:06:00 am »
I know there are a couple of people on here with colour-blindness, and I saw this reported, thought it might be of use.

DanKam:  Augmented Reality For Color Blindness « Dan Kaminsky's Blog

It is simpler than it looks.

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: Colour Blind App for Android and iPhone
« Reply #1 on: 28 January, 2011, 01:05:41 am »
I've installed that on barakta's Android phone and successfully used it to cheat at Ishihara plates.   8)

Sadly the phone's a bit lacking in the CPU (and more importantly, camera) department to do the app justice.

I must do some proper experimentation in controlled conditions though.  If it can reliably do something really tricky like resistor colour bands[1], then I'm sorely tempted to invest in one of those shiny modern smartphones in spite of their lack of a proper keyboard.

Hue quantisation seems like a much more effective approach to real-world colour discrimination problems than my current method of using a bit of pink[2] gel (which works okay for things like LEDs changing state, but doesn't really leave me any the wiser as to what an ambiguous colour is in absolute terms).


[1] Insert colourblind electrical engineer joke here.
[2] Your colour vision may vary.  Pink works for me, but won't be as helpful for the more common forms of colourblindness.

Karla

  • car(e) free
    • Lost Byway - around the world by bike
Re: Colour Blind App for Android and iPhone
« Reply #2 on: 28 January, 2011, 01:12:56 am »
If it can reliably do something really tricky like resistor colour bands[1], then I'm sorely tempted to invest in one of those shiny modern smartphones

+1.

jogler

  • mojo operandi
Re: Colour Blind App for Android and iPhone
« Reply #3 on: 28 January, 2011, 01:43:36 am »
YE GODS THAT IS AMAZING .

Quite literally AMAZING

In fact,astonishing..trully astonishing.I'm not exaggerating here.I have never seen anything like that.I can see the numbers in the circle of dots for the very first time in my life :o
I can see different,clearly contrasting colours.I keep staring at it almost hypnotised.
I think I have some perception of what so many of you take for granted.
I feel rather stunned....

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: Colour Blind App for Android and iPhone
« Reply #4 on: 28 January, 2011, 01:49:17 am »
Those particular plates are ones that work especially well, but having worked through a selection, they were all doable with a bit of tweaking.  Awesome stuff.   :thumbsup:

Hopefully augmented reality will catch on and the Evil Empire will make smartphones-in-your-glasses the Next Big Thing.    8)

Re: Colour Blind App for Android and iPhone
« Reply #5 on: 28 January, 2011, 08:54:17 am »
I must do some proper experimentation in controlled conditions though.  If it can reliably do something really tricky like resistor colour bands[1], then I'm sorely tempted to invest in one of those shiny modern smartphones in spite of their lack of a proper keyboard.


SE X10 Mini Pro has a keyboard - though small, and the pnone itself wont get anymore Android updates.
We are making a New World (Paul Nash, 1918)

Re: Colour Blind App for Android and iPhone
« Reply #6 on: 28 January, 2011, 09:02:30 am »
What a wonderful app.  I have to say that is amazing.   I know a few folk for whom this will really make life better for them.

Although partially-sighted I have very good colour pereption despite almost every semi-informed idiot telling me that I'm colour blind because I'm albino.   Somebody seems to have decided that if you have no melanin then you cannot see in colour either.  Duh  :facepalm:


jogler

  • mojo operandi
Re: Colour Blind App for Android and iPhone
« Reply #7 on: 28 January, 2011, 09:15:06 am »
 Somebody seems to have decided that if you have no melanin then you cannot see in colour either.  Duh  :facepalm:



This is a fine example of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing.

clarion

  • Tyke
Re: Colour Blind App for Android and iPhone
« Reply #8 on: 28 January, 2011, 09:24:53 am »
Fascinating.
Getting there...

jogler

  • mojo operandi
Re: Colour Blind App for Android and iPhone
« Reply #9 on: 28 January, 2011, 09:33:27 am »
I have felt compelled to look at this again...& again...& again this morning.
I feel rather excited by it.How sad is that ::-)

clarion

  • Tyke
Re: Colour Blind App for Android and iPhone
« Reply #10 on: 28 January, 2011, 09:34:43 am »
Not. Sad. At. All.
Getting there...

Rhys W

  • I'm single, bilingual
    • Cardiff Ajax
Re: Colour Blind App for Android and iPhone
« Reply #11 on: 28 January, 2011, 09:38:39 am »
Awesome use of technology... and a deceptively simple idea.

jogler

  • mojo operandi
Re: Colour Blind App for Android and iPhone
« Reply #12 on: 28 January, 2011, 02:16:02 pm »
just had yet another butcher's.
 it's fascinating

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: Colour Blind App for Android and iPhone
« Reply #13 on: 28 January, 2011, 02:44:52 pm »
Reading the web page again, it really needs a hue-quantised version of that green woman pic (to me they both look almost identically NTSCish) so the colourblind readers can see what they're on about.

I have form for being oblivious to that sort of thing though.  I didn't notice the girl with the red coat in Schindler's List until someone pointed it out to me[1], and while Lt Cmdr Data is obviously wearing Too Much Makeup, there isn't anything particularly unsual about his skin tone.  Being red deficient, most (white) people's skin is some shade of that hideous pale green they like to paint hospitals and schools to keep the inmates miserable.

My perception of primary red as a colour is fine, it just appears relatively darker compared to the other primaries (So yes, there's a point where dark red becomes black - roughly around the colour of red wine.  I was also amused to discover that barakta could see an electric hob glowing in what I would class as infra-red.).  Hence I see a lot of yellows as green, and a lot of purples as blue.  Pink is easily mistaken for grey (both being a sort of greeny-blue), which I'm particularly careful about.  Cyan is a fictional made-up Ceefax word for 'white'.  I don't care about obnoxious tail lights (they're just really not that bright).  And I wore a lot of bright red until I had my vision properly tested as part of a City University study, fed the results into an image processing program and promptly decided to be a goth instead  ;)


[1] This is a good example of how my vision works - it's not that I can't see colours, it's that cognitively I don't pay much attention to them when there are much more salient differences in contrast to go by.  It's a black and white film, so I'm not looking for colour.  Pleasantville, on the other hand, is much more obvious (though I probably missed a couple of details - it could do with subtitles for the colourblind).

Re: Colour Blind App for Android and iPhone
« Reply #14 on: 28 January, 2011, 06:13:51 pm »
Reading the web page again, it really needs a hue-quantised version of that green woman pic (to me they both look almost identically NTSCish) so the colourblind readers can see what they're on about.

I have form for being oblivious to that sort of thing though.  I didn't notice the girl with the red coat in Schindler's List until someone pointed it out to me[1], and while Lt Cmdr Data is obviously wearing Too Much Makeup, there isn't anything particularly unsual about his skin tone.  Being red deficient, most (white) people's skin is some shade of that hideous pale green they like to paint hospitals and schools to keep the inmates miserable.

My perception of primary red as a colour is fine, it just appears relatively darker compared to the other primaries (So yes, there's a point where dark red becomes black - roughly around the colour of red wine.  I was also amused to discover that barakta could see an electric hob glowing in what I would class as infra-red.).  Hence I see a lot of yellows as green, and a lot of purples as blue.  Pink is easily mistaken for grey (both being a sort of greeny-blue), which I'm particularly careful about.  Cyan is a fictional made-up Ceefax word for 'white'.  I don't care about obnoxious tail lights (they're just really not that bright).  And I wore a lot of bright red until I had my vision properly tested as part of a City University study, fed the results into an image processing program and promptly decided to be a goth instead  ;)


[1] This is a good example of how my vision works - it's not that I can't see colours, it's that cognitively I don't pay much attention to them when there are much more salient differences in contrast to go by.  It's a black and white film, so I'm not looking for colour.  Pleasantville, on the other hand, is much more obvious (though I probably missed a couple of details - it could do with subtitles for the colourblind).


+1

This might almost be a reason to buy an iPhone

Are they expensive?
“There is no point in using the word 'impossible' to describe something that has clearly happened.”
― Douglas Adams

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: Colour Blind App for Android and iPhone
« Reply #15 on: 28 January, 2011, 07:21:19 pm »
This might almost be a reason to buy an iPhone

Are they expensive?

I believe the going rate is some ridiculous number of earth pounds in the form of a contract to O2, and your immortal soul to Apple.

andygates

  • Peroxide Viking
Re: Colour Blind App for Android and iPhone
« Reply #16 on: 28 January, 2011, 07:42:29 pm »
Droids are available across all the big networks and a faked hissy fit should score you an upgrade.
It takes blood and guts to be this cool but I'm still just a cliché.
OpenStreetMap UK & IRL Streetmap & Topo: ravenfamily.org/andyg/maps updates weekly.

Re: Colour Blind App for Android and iPhone
« Reply #17 on: 28 January, 2011, 08:31:47 pm »
My current phone is an ultra basic Sony Erikson PAYG jobbie. I use it maybe once a month.

At the moment I'm not even sure where it is - if it's not in the car glovebox or in the hybrids Carradice its probably been kicked under the bed somewhere.

I'll google cheap android phone and see what it comes back with.

Is it worth doing? From colour normals descriptions of what they think they see it sounds like a horribly garish confusing world out there.
“There is no point in using the word 'impossible' to describe something that has clearly happened.”
― Douglas Adams

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: Colour Blind App for Android and iPhone
« Reply #18 on: 28 January, 2011, 08:50:03 pm »
Is it worth doing? From colour normals descriptions of what they think they see it sounds like a horribly garish confusing world out there.

I think it depends on how often you find yourself frustrated by not knowing what particular shade of $generic_poo_colour something is.

Until we have actual google goggles, this is only ever going to be something you can whip out for tricky edge-cases: avoiding buying embarassing clothes, identifying cores in a cable, working out whether the battery LED has changed from 'charging' to 'charged', that sort of thing.  It's not going to make the traffic lights stand out against the night time city clutter, it's not going to help you spot Charlotte without your glasses on, and it's not going to stop people asking for you to hand them the green chopping board rather than the medium-sized one.

Even if it was real-time, high-definition and beamed directly onto your glasses, I don't think you'd want to view the world in false colour most of the time.  It masks at least as much information as it reveals.

Re: Colour Blind App for Android and iPhone
« Reply #19 on: 28 January, 2011, 08:57:37 pm »
Yeah - that's more or less what I was thinking.

Something that tells me when food is cooked without having to wait for it to turn black would be useful though.


'Press the green button'  What's wrong with calling it the enter key >:(
“There is no point in using the word 'impossible' to describe something that has clearly happened.”
― Douglas Adams

andygates

  • Peroxide Viking
Re: Colour Blind App for Android and iPhone
« Reply #20 on: 28 January, 2011, 09:02:47 pm »
Wait, you guys can't spot Charlotte in a crowd?  That's just weird

Well I suppose Pantone Red turns to mush too, but I mean, surely she's already hue-enhanced?  I heard they had to fit a filter to the googlesat to keep it from burning out its red channel, after all...
It takes blood and guts to be this cool but I'm still just a cliché.
OpenStreetMap UK & IRL Streetmap & Topo: ravenfamily.org/andyg/maps updates weekly.

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: Colour Blind App for Android and iPhone
« Reply #21 on: 28 January, 2011, 09:05:28 pm »
Something that tells me when food is cooked without having to wait for it to turn black would be useful though.

That's called a timer, for things without an obvious non-colour-based state change.  Work out what works, then cook by numbers.


Quote
'Press the green button'  What's wrong with calling it the enter key >:(

I get the impression that normal people find colour such a overwhelmingly obvious attribute of things that they simply disregard other information, in much the same way I tend to disregard colour unless primed to notice it.  I still find it hard to believe that it can override *written text* as a cue (special cases like when dealing small children or when there's a language barrier excepted) , but it evidently does with great regularity.

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: Colour Blind App for Android and iPhone
« Reply #22 on: 28 January, 2011, 09:09:45 pm »
Wait, you guys can't spot Charlotte in a crowd?  That's just weird

That's protanopia-specific, I expect.  Bright red becomes dark-red-that-might-be-brown, which is a perfectly common hair colour.

It's the gingers with the bright green hair that stand out.

andygates

  • Peroxide Viking
Re: Colour Blind App for Android and iPhone
« Reply #23 on: 28 January, 2011, 09:21:41 pm »
I had hair like that once.  Never overdye peroxide at home. 

Of course the button thing is why, when I talk to my users, it's "Press the big green Enter button with the arrow on it" -- every damn sensory cue I can think of, because they never think the way support think (especially not front-line support - we back-room drones are a bit off with humans) ).

Does the droid version have a desaturate version so I get to see what you happy mutants normally see?  I need to check how absurd my hair might look.
It takes blood and guts to be this cool but I'm still just a cliché.
OpenStreetMap UK & IRL Streetmap & Topo: ravenfamily.org/andyg/maps updates weekly.