Use your iPhone to help with color blindness
- sep
- 21
Color blind? Here's how your iPhone can help!
Are you or a loved one color blind? Whether it be to help you determine colors for you, help a color-able person understand your experience, or even help you see overlapping colors that typically cause issues, your iPhone or iPad can help!
What is color blindness?
Briefly, being color blind is a condition where there is an overlap in color detection in a individual that can causes difficulty in distinguishing certain colors under normal light. You can get a more detailed explanation of color blindness, as well as various tests to see if you are color blind or what kind of color blindness you have, from Enchroma, makers of eyewear that claims to help color blind individuals better distinguish colors.
How can the iPhone or iPad help?
Your iPhone or iPad camera does not suffer from a deficiency in distinguishing colors. In fact, if you can determine the type of color blindness you have, you can use your iPhone or iPad camera to "translate" the colors it sees into words or into a color you, the color blind individual, can understand.
Inspecting colors with Color Blind Pal
Color Blind Pal (Free) comes with a color "inspector" that can tell the user what color is being presented on it target crosshairs. Having trouble seeing which wire is green and which wire is red? Color Blind Pal will figure it out for you.
Experiencing color blindness with Chromatic Vision Simulator
Chromatic Vision Simulator (Free) will display normal color output side-by-side with a variety of simulated color blind outputs to give the user an idea of what a color blind person will see. Not color blind yourself but need to create a color blind accessible image? This app will give you perspective.
Modify live video with ColorDeBlind
ColorDeBlind ($0.99) will help a color blind person distinguish problematic colors in real time though the view finder. Colors will not be true to what a normal vision can detect but being able to see the separation of one color from another can be achieved when otherwise very difficult for a color blind person.
Comments or questions?
I'm not color blind myself, but my two boys are. They don't feel like they are missing out on anything and I don't push them to try and see the world "like the rest of us". However, it is reassuring to know that technologies exist today that can help them if they are so inclined to do so. The best part is that the technology can only get better. Are you or a loved one color blind? Have any tips or comments on using your iPhone or iPad to help with distinguishing colors? Let us know in the comments!