Color Blind Divers?
- Thread starter Akimbo
- Start date
Please register or login
Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.
Benefits of registering include
- Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
- A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
- You can make this box go away
OP
@Diver0001
Reference the yellow and green examples above. They are more difficult for me to read on a white background, but stand out like a Neon sign on a black background. Do you think that configuration options for different background colors would improve readability/visibility of colored text for you?
Just curious, when and how did you discover that you perceive colors differently than the majority? I know that my dad never really thought of himself as different -- even though he surprised my mom with a beautiful green new car. You guessed it, it as gray and she hated it. Interesting conversation.
Reference the yellow and green examples above. They are more difficult for me to read on a white background, but stand out like a Neon sign on a black background. Do you think that configuration options for different background colors would improve readability/visibility of colored text for you?
Just curious, when and how did you discover that you perceive colors differently than the majority? I know that my dad never really thought of himself as different -- even though he surprised my mom with a beautiful green new car. You guessed it, it as gray and she hated it. Interesting conversation.
I used to be a bit of a gamer (no time for that anymore) and I've helped several major gaming companies understand the struggle of colour blind people. My advice was always the same, namely to give the user the ability to customize the colour for each critical element of the game.
I'll tell you two stories about this before I talk about diving computers.
Some games are completely unplayable for colour blind people.... and I mean COMPLETELY unplayable. There is currently a mobile game called "Hayday" (stupid game, you need to feed virtual cows with virtual food to make virtual milk that you use to make virtual cheese that you use to make virtual pizzas to feed to virtual people who give you virtual items that allow you to expand your virtual farm). It's really hamster-in-a-wheel work..... This example sticks in my mind, however, because despite how stupid the game is I kind of liked playing it on the train to get my head out of the tornado (sue me, I'm a nerd).
I had to stop, however because the maker of the game, Supercell, basically gave me the middle finger when I told them that I was PHYSICALLY unable to tell the difference between the "blackberry muffin" and the "raspberry muffin" as well as a variety of other items in the game. What did Supercell do? They used the identical icon for different items (easy to program) but with different colours. I already said that black and red look mostly the same to me so I literally, to save my life, could not tell the difference between these two items as well as others. The people at Supercell, however, mocked my attempts to address this and ignored my feedback entirely. They wrote me back saying that I just needed to be more observant. **** that attitude. I am literally PHYSICALLY unable to observe the difference. So, yeah, some game manufacturers are completely insensitive to this.
Other game makers, however, were more responsive. I played EVEONLINE (CCP games Iceland) for a time and had horrific trouble handing their interface because of the colour issues. I contacted them and made some suggestions and they implemented it directly in the next release. Eventually I had to stop playing their game too but it was because I was becoming addicted. It is, however, the single best computer game in the history of human-kind. Period. If you like computer games and you don't have an addictive personality, then go play this game. Seriously.
So what does this have to do with diving computers?
Everything!
Take a company like Shearwater. I have used their petrel computer but found it difficult because they present CRITICAL information in RED...... which is the utterly STUPIDEST thing they could do for someone like me. That information needs to be presented in a much more vibrant coulour (yellow or blue) AND IT NEEDS TO FLASH or it may never get my attention at all.
One example: I blew a stop during a Trimix dive while wearing a Petrel. I am still used to working my ascent mostly in my head so my computer is a backup and I have to admit that I wansn't 100% tuned into my computer (old habits etc). It wasn't a major issue. I was a meter or 2 too shallow for the ceiling the petrel calculated and our remaining deco wasn't epic. What happened, however, is that the information on the screen turned RED (and may indeed have started to flash), which made it pretty much invisible to me. My buddy, a couple of meters away, however, saw immediately that my computer was turning red and pointed it out to me. I looked and had trouble reading it because it was dark and the text was red. Just like the traffic lights I wondered if there were "blank" spots on the screen..... (should I stop or is it turned off?). My buddy indicated to descend, which I did, and after descending a couple of meters the information changed colour and I could see it again.
So yeah, just like game manufacturers, computer manufacturers need to account for the needs of colour blind users. The question is if they want to be like Supercell or like CCP? As it is, I'm still using an old LCD computer for my technical diving. Grey is easy to read in all conditions.
R..
OP
Attention @RonR, @Shearwater Cloud, and everyone else on Scubaboard involved with dive computer R&D. You might want to follow this thread.
Yes. Even if the only option was to project it on a grey background.
Sad story. (this is likely to get long, sorry for that).....
I grew up in the mountains..... like WAAAY off the beaten path in the Rocky Mountains in Canada. We were literally 500km from the nearest city. For us, the "big" city was the next town 32km away. they had a population of 15,000. After that, 500km of nothing other than villages like the one where I grew up. My town grew around a mine and everyone either worked at the mine or the "concentrator" which is where they separated the lead, zinc and silver from the ore.... It was a big mine, and therefore a "big" village. It was the biggest lead and zinc mine in the world for a couple of decades. 5000 people lived there at its peak.
I was 18 years old when I saw my first "city bus"..... I had moved to Vancouver (2.5 million people who would rather die than speak to one another) to study Computer Science and English Literature at an actual University and needed to take the bus to get to the University. This was obviously new to me. We did not have public transport where I came from and we did not have strangers.
I stepped onto the bus on the first day and said, "hello", with a little wave (like we did back home), and literally everyone on the bus looked away and was clearly thinking, "**** me, I will die if he sits next to me". Where I originally thought that moving to the big city would help me connect to new people, I learned on day one that living in the big city is the loneliest thing a person can experience if they don't have "city skills". There is a whole story to tell about that but I'll defer for now.
I digress. How it was discovered was in grade 1. We were 6 years old. In our village we were required to take a number of IQ tests. My score on their IQ tests (which were surely antiquated) was so high that they called it "immeasurable" (I was off the scale). I scored so high that they thought I was cheating and made me take the test again with a "supervisor" sitting in the chair next to me. I, of course, understood none of this and just did what they asked. I scored higher the second time.
The wife of the principle of the school was my grade 1 teacher. She was still convinced that I had somehow managed to cheat on the IQ test and my entire first year at school involved fighting her abuse (both physical and emotional but it was the 1970's so I'm not going to #metoo this crap... it was another time). Perhaps I should thank her for my career because my entire career is based upon being the "out of the box" thinker and the one who charts his own course regardless of what other people think of him...... I learned that early. It may be the abuse and complete lack of confidence shown in me by my grade 1 teacher that I have to thank for the amazing success I've had in my career.
At the very least it was formative.
She was the one who found it. We had to do these exercises in a work-book with "connect A with B" and it was based on colour. I got them, as you can imagine, all wrong. Not once, not twice. Every ... single ... time... She assumed -- being the person she was -- that it was personal and I did it to mind-fck her. She was livid and wanted to fail me for grade 1 because, in her words, "he is clearly retarded". That's what she wrote in my grade 1 report..... Touché!
My mother was the one who intervened, thinking "off the scale" AND "retarded" needs to be explained. Given the results of the IQ tests she wasn't having it. We went to the "big city" and had a proper optometrist look at my eyes (because this kind of thing can not be done in Canada in the middle-of-nowhere) and he discovered my "condition".
And that's how it came to light.
R..
@Diver0001 My buddy has the same condition as you. He is also a huge NY Jets fan.
Last year the Jets played Buffalo and we went to the game. Surprise for him: Each team wore their retro jerseys. Jets in green; Buffalo in red. He had absolutely NO idea what was going on in the game. They may as well have been wearing the same jerseys. We left after 10 minutes. (I presume that the referees were checked for color blindness before the game too!).
Last year the Jets played Buffalo and we went to the game. Surprise for him: Each team wore their retro jerseys. Jets in green; Buffalo in red. He had absolutely NO idea what was going on in the game. They may as well have been wearing the same jerseys. We left after 10 minutes. (I presume that the referees were checked for color blindness before the game too!).
Shearwater
Contributor
This is really surprising to hear. We have consciously designed our products to be colorblind friendly for many years. Our for error displays on our computers, controllers, HUDs and NERDs all have specific flash patterns that do not rely on color to detect.
For example:
Bruce
I suspect that will work for many colourblind people (note correct spelling, Bruce, aren't you Canadian? 
)
However, if I have understood Rob correctly, since he cannot perceive red at all, he won't see the flashing parts at all. Many colourblind folk will perceive, for example, red as a shade of grey. For them, a flashing red block with red text will look like a flashing grey box with grey text, no worries. For someone who cannot see red at all, the display will alternate between nothing and nothing, leading it to look like a dead display area.
I imagine that having a "No red/green" option would allow that warning to be flashing blue text on a blue background, that would be visible to Rob. Obviously, there are not a lot of people with that serious a colour issue, so I am not even sure how many divers there would be, but would it be an expensive coding change to make?
)However, if I have understood Rob correctly, since he cannot perceive red at all, he won't see the flashing parts at all. Many colourblind folk will perceive, for example, red as a shade of grey. For them, a flashing red block with red text will look like a flashing grey box with grey text, no worries. For someone who cannot see red at all, the display will alternate between nothing and nothing, leading it to look like a dead display area.
I imagine that having a "No red/green" option would allow that warning to be flashing blue text on a blue background, that would be visible to Rob. Obviously, there are not a lot of people with that serious a colour issue, so I am not even sure how many divers there would be, but would it be an expensive coding change to make?
It was probably me, then. I borrowed the computer for 1 dive to just try it out and didn't look into the settings other than to change the HE and O2 settings.
OP
Good on ya mate!
This points out an oversight when I wrote the OP (Original Post). I incorrectly ASSumed that all color vision deficiencies would be visible. Is this better? BTW, I understand that "color vision deficiency" is considered the technically correct term -- no idea if there are any sensitivity or politically correct aspects to it or not.
Please provide feedback on these samples. Can you tell they are all different and are some especially difficult to read or completely blank?
1: This is a reference for BLACK text, this is Bold.
2. RED: This is a test for RED text, this is Bold. Color Number ff0000
3 Dark RED: This is a test for Dark RED text, this is Bold. Color Number b30000
4: BLUE: This is a test for Dark BLUE text, this is Bold. Color Number 0000b3
5 GRAY: This is a test for GRAY text, this is Bold. Color Number 808080
Just to insure I correctly understand @Diver0001, test 1 and 2 above are completely blank? If true, that would make this new warning function ineffective:
SAFETY WARNING
It should display the following in RED (simulated):
=============================================================
SAFETY WARNING
Divers should be aware of color vision deficiencies, theirs and dive buddies.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please confirm if the red parts are blank or not.
Similar threads
