[HN Gopher] Sim Daltonism: The color blindness simulator
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Sim Daltonism: The color blindness simulator
Author : robin_reala
Score : 33 points
Date : 2025-03-28 10:32 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (michelf.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (michelf.ca)
| oniony wrote:
| For anyone on Android, this is possible with Simulate Color Space
| option in the hidden Developer Tools menu. Amusingly it works
| with the camera too, so you can look around the real world with
| some sense of what it's like.
| politelemon wrote:
| That sounds more useful, cheers. I wonder why they haven't made
| it a non hidden option.
| OJFord wrote:
| It's annoying enough (especially as a child at school, but
| not at all exclusively) to be colourblind and put up with 'so
| what colour is this' without people waving their phone around
| exclaiming about how it says you see things, thanks.
| cwillu wrote:
| Sure, but at the same time, it's a useful tool to show
| people how unusable their ui is using something they
| already have.
|
| The problem with "what colour is this? what colour is
| that?" is not the question, it's that the question comes up
| with an expectation of an answer, regardless of the
| context. If I'm _never_ willing to answer the annoying
| question, that makes me the asshole regardless of how poor
| my colour vision is.
| egypturnash wrote:
| This is such a useful tool, I constantly pop it up to check
| contrast in my art.
| DawsonBruce wrote:
| Huge fan of this tool for working on GUI implementations,
| ensuring the color choices and contrasts make sense for users
| that see GUIs differently than I do.
| bluechair wrote:
| I'll highlight a note from the developer:
|
| _Sim Daltonism lets you see through the eyes of someone with a
| color blindness. While the colors shown are a good approximation
| of what a color blind person would see, you should not expect
| them to be perfect._
|
| _Everyone has his own perception of colors that differs slightly
| from other people, and color blindness are often partial at
| different degrees. More importantly, cameras do not have the same
| spectral response as cones in your eyes, so the simulation has to
| make some assumptions about the frequency composition of the
| colors._
|
| I'm colorblind and haven't found a simulator that comes close to
| what it's like for me. This app doesn't do it either.
| adamgordonbell wrote:
| I'm also color blind, red green, but not sure how you expected
| to be able to judge it.
|
| You can't see how the app affects colors in absense of your own
| color blindness to compare.
| egypturnash wrote:
| What would "close to what it's like" entail exactly?
|
| Would it mean that when you look at a simulation of the effects
| of your colorblindness, you see zero change from the unaltered
| view?
|
| Or would it mean that it looks absolutely nothing like what you
| see because it's transforming the base image by clamping the
| input colors to what you can see, and stretching that decimated
| color space out over the entire range of normal sensitivity?
|
| Sometimes I suspect that the range of color qualia the human
| mind experiences is the same regardless of what actual color
| receptors one has; the sensation we call "red" is assigned to
| the lowest end of the input scale, regardless of whether or not
| the lowest end is at the normal wavelength, and that every
| filter that just removes color and provides a duller image is
| doing completely the wrong thing. But it's a much simpler
| transformation to implement.
|
| (I think the key to checking this would involve violently
| clashing colors. Or a way to make someone start growing new
| cone cells in their eyes.)
|
| Also if you have had entirely too many conversations with the
| normies about "what does it look like for you" then please just
| ignore this, my SO is partially colorblind and gets that a lot!
| swiftcoder wrote:
| > Would it mean that when you look at a simulation of the
| effects of your colorblindness, you see zero change from the
| unaltered view?
|
| Ideally, yes. Although it's unlikely to match any one
| person's exact colour vision.
|
| If you look at filtered images side-by-side, say from this
| collection on bored panda[1], to me the deutran images and
| the normal image are pretty much indistinguishable, while the
| protan image is close but slightly too green.
|
| > Or would it mean that it looks absolutely nothing like what
| you see because it's transforming the base image by clamping
| the input colors to what you can see, and stretching that
| decimated color space out over the entire range of normal
| sensitivity?
|
| That's how most "colour blind filters" look in practice, yes.
| I don't think a lot of folks are setting up the transform
| correctly (or they are just straight-up using a
| colourblindness _preview_ filter as if it were a
| colourblindness correction filter).
|
| [1]: https://www.boredpanda.com/different-types-color-
| blindness-p...
| fisherjeff wrote:
| I have always felt the same way - this article at The Verge is
| the only thing I've ever thought has gotten close:
|
| https://www.theverge.com/23650428/colorblindness-design-ui-a...
| Terr_ wrote:
| Part of it may be the display technology, rather than what the
| software thinks should look right.
|
| Those RGB pixels are chosen and tuned to trick a certain _homo
| sapiens_ baseline setup of chemical sensors neurological
| weighing of sensor inputs. Light from natural source is
| dramatically more-varied.
| rollcat wrote:
| Tangential: I've been playing around with the color blindness
| filters on my iPhone, and the grayscale filter had me thinking
| for a moment. I've set it to 50%, set up the accessibility
| shortcut (triple-click on the home button) to toggle it, and
| found myself using my phone with the filter on basically 99% of
| the time.
|
| It's been a couple of months, and I've noticed that the
| oversaturated colors were making me slightly agitated, somehow
| captivating my attention. I sometimes disable the filter to look
| at a particular picture, or to figure out a detail in some
| context where the colors are already desaturated. Now my only
| wish is that it was less linear, maybe like a compressor in audio
| - maintain detail until it starts approaching the ceiling.
|
| It may be a good idea if you'd consider <thelightphone.com> but
| don't want to switch.
|
| Also, Rob Pike:
| <https://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2020/09/color-blindness-i...>
|
| Also:
| <https://duckduckgo.com/?q=plan+9+from+bell+labs+rio&ia=image...>
| itishappy wrote:
| I bet there's a way to accomplish what you're looking for with
| ICC profiles. They allow arbitrary functions and LUTs in
| addition to standard matrix math. There's typically a way to
| set this for your OS, an individual image, and I'm pretty sure
| an individual app as well (but I'd imagine only your own).
|
| Edit: Actually, this may not be editable on iOS, but it is on
| macOS, Windows, probably Linux, and it looks like Android too.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICC_profile
| anonymars wrote:
| You can do this on Android as well (manufacturer results may
| vary...)
|
| This is on Android 14, but I initially turned it on in an
| earlier version: 1. unlock the Developer options (you can
| search this; depends on OS version) 2. in Developer options,
| scroll down to "simulate color space", choose grayscale 3. back
| to main settings --> Accessibility --> advanced, there is an
| "accessibility button" option 4. set that to "color correction"
|
| Now I have a small icon (looks like a person) that I can use to
| toggle monochrome. Indeed it was someone I heard on a train who
| had this turned on for iPhone as described above for the same
| reason ("lowers the dopamine response", he explained to the
| conductor) that intrigued me into looking into it
|
| Samsung also has a decent automation infrastructure ("modes and
| routines"), so I set that up to automatically disable the color
| correction / grayscale in certain apps (camera, photos, maps,
| etc.)
| machine_ghost wrote:
| Mac-only: no thanks.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| It's not for you, clearly. But there's plenty of platform-
| specific software in the world, especially when they involve
| low-level system extension.
| lastdong wrote:
| Kudos to the developer for creating such an optimized app! It's
| only 444KB for iOS.
| AprilArcus wrote:
| Could this be used in reverse to correct for color vision
| disorders, e.g. by punching down greens and blues and punching up
| reds into the outer range of the P3 gamut?
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