In 2017, about 8% of all men in the World are suffering from Color Blindness ! Whereas this number is just about 0.5%, it remains a big problem for a lot of people. In reality, 99% of all colorblind people are not really color blind but rather color deficient. Thus, the term color blindness is misleading.
We must think about the fact that people strongly colorblind might only be able to tell about 20 hues apart from each other whereas for people with normal color vision, this number raises to more than 100 different hues ! There are different types of color vision deficiency :
- Red-Green color blindness with Protanopia / Protanomaly problems
- Red-Green color blindness with Deuteranopia / Deuteranomaly problems
- Blue-Yellow color blindness with Tritanopia / Tritanomaly problems
By chance, Android offers a Color Correction mode which enables your device to compensate for Color Blindness. This mode offers you to compensate for Color Blindness with one of the following option :
- Deuteranomaly (Red-Green)
- Protanomaly (Red-Green)
- Tritanomaly (Blue-Yellow)
- Deuteranopia (Green)
- Protanopia (Red)
- Tritanopia (Blue)
Before trying to choose one of these options, you would need to test your Color Vision to determine if your are Color Blind and if yes, what kind of color vision deficiency your suffer.
Dr Shinobu Ishihara, a professor at the University of Tokyo, has designed a test, named the Ishihara Color Test, in 2017 which lets you to test your Color Vision easily. The Ishihara Color Test is a color perception test for red-green color deficiencies compounded of pseudo-isochromatic plates.
To make the Ishihara Color Test on your Android device, the best solution is to download the free Color Blindness Test available on the Google Play Store.
Color Blindness Test - Android Apps on Google Play
Color Blindness Test offers you to make the long Ishihara Color Test version with 24 plates. During the test, you will have to see 24 plates and answer to questions to say what do you see on the screen.
If you don’t like the ads, you can support the developer by buying the Pro version also available on the Google Play Store :
Color Blindness Test Pro - Android Apps on Google Play
Color Blindness Test offers you to make the long Ishihara Color Test version with 24 plates. During the test, you will have to see 24 plates and answer to questions to say what do you see on the screen.
To discover how to use the Color Blindness Test, you have just to look to the following demo on Youtube :
The Ishihara Color test ended, you know if you have a Color Vision deficiency and most importantly the type of your deficiency. So, now you can go to configure the Color Correction Mode of your Android device.
Go on Settings > Accessibility > Color Space Correction. Tap to choose your option and you will see the following list :
Once your option is picked, your device should compensate for Color Blindness. For example for a Red-Green deficiency with deuteranomaly, you should see the following on your Android device :
To take an other example, for a Blue-Yellow deficiency with tritanomaly, you should see the following on your Android device :
With the Color Correction enabled on your Android device, it will affect everything you see on your phone or tablet’s display, including full-screen content like videos and games for example. However, and it’s a good thing, the color changes won’t be shown in any screenshots you take. It will be useful for colorblind users sharing screen images with friends having a normal vision.
Thanks to the Color Blindness Test for Android and the Color Correction Mode offered by Android in standard, the color blind users will have their life simplified now with their smartphones and tablets.