[thelist] color blindness

[Andrew Jones]

> The problem with your argument, Andrew, is that EVERY 
> color scheme except mono is going to affect some segment 
> of color blind people...

  My argument is that we should try to accomodate people. I 
don't see that as a problem.

  You can *try* to accomodate the most common form of color 
blindness without ruining your design.

>but having to make a decision that makes
> the site better for the MAJORITY of your viewers.

  Per my 10 percent comment, I don't consider this segment 
of the population to be insignificant. Your point seems to be 
that accomodating these people ruins your design. That's true 
if you only see one way of doing things.

  Now, about some of these other comments that the color 
blind perhaps don't see mix-matched colors as ugly. That's 
good news, but it's a case of "they've never seen the world any 
other way, so they have no way of knowing what they are 
really missing." It hits at the very heart of perception. For 
example, I had a (totally) blind friend in high school who, try 
as you might to explain it to him, could never understand how 
a drawn picture could look 3-D. Describing a simple line 
drawing of a cube to him was an enigma. If you've never 
experienced it, you may understand it exists, but you'll never 
fully appreciate it.

  In that respect, I have to guess it's possible to make 
adjustments to a color scheme that would make it more 
attractive to a color blind person than if the colors were left 
unoptimized.