[thelist] color blindness

[Jorah Lavin]

At 03:07 AM 10/6/00, Adrian Fischer wrote:

>Im colour blind and how things look is/has never been an issue.  My level of
>colour perception is about as bad as it can get.

Not to play "I'm more handicapped than YOU are," but I can assure you that 
color perception can get worse than that.  The other day I was at work, 
wearing a green shirt (which I thought was grey) and mid-morning one of the 
admins goes "Hey, Jorah, why is there a huge red blotch on your shirt?"  My 
wife's sweater had bled all over the wash.  I couldn't see the stain even 
after it was pointed out to me.

Now, as to web sites, most of the time there are no problems, but I 
remember several sites I've stumbled across which counted on a contrast 
between text color and background color which didn't exist for me.  I had 
to "select all" on the page in order to change the colors to even see any 
text there.  If this happens in navigational elements, it can be disconcerting.

Before I started working with a real designer, my color selections, indeed, 
were sometimes... well, --startling--, I guess would be the right word.

I doubt I'm missing a whole lot, but the "red stain on the green shirt" 
incident makes me wonder...


-Jorah

PS:  My great grand-dad saw only the color blue.  Everything else was 
grey.  Imagine if we had to design for him!  I am not sure I've ever seen 
purple... it goes on and on...