Useful article about colourblindness (Colour vision deficiency) from the NHS

The NHS have useful information on their website about colourblindness, including information on; an explanation of what it is; types and symptoms of colour vision deficiency; tests for colour vision deficiency; issues for people with a colour vision deficiency; causes of colour vision deficiency; how colour vision deficiency is inherited. The NHS page can be found here: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/colour-vision-deficiency/

Trendy-haired teen cartoon recreated in Inkscape

This wee lass is recreated from page 5 of 25 Quick Cartoon Characters by Christopher Hart using the free vector graphics program Inkscape.

Colourblindness did you know?

The first document written about colourblindness was by a chemist, John Dalton, in 1798. He himself was colourblind.

Glasses Girl cartoon recreated in Inkscape

She looks more like a woman than a girl, but hey-ho. She is recreated in Inkscape from page 4 of the 25 Quick Cartoon Characters book by Christopher Hart. I've done a quick animation test on this head using Crazy Talk Animator 3 and posted the result on my Mad Dog Youtube channel.

Colourblindness facts

Colour blindness, or more correctly Colour Vision Deficiency affects 8% of males (1 in 12) and 0.5% of females (1 in 200)

Useful Hex colours

Please note that the below list will be added to periodically

Fleshtones

           #ffe0bd
           #ffcd94
           #eac086
           #ffad60
           #ffe39f

Eyes

           #5e481e Brown
           #542a0e Brown
           #63390f Brown
           #603101 Brown
           #451800 Brown
           #a1caf1 Baby Blue
           #2c4c63 Deep Blue


Hair

           #d8c078 Blond
           #e3cc88 Blond
           #f2da91 Blond
           #f2e1ae Blond
           #f2e7c7 Blond

Lipstick

           #f4846c Coral in Gold (Rimmel)
           #f69687 Nude Pink (Rimmel)
           #a8050e Red
           #d7020f Blood Orange
           #f32021 Red (Pigment)

Green eye created in Inkscape

Feel free to use this png eye in your projects. A linkback would be nice, but is not necessary.

Annoying things people say when they find someone is colour blind

What colour is this then?

You're not colour blind?

What's it like to be colour blind?

How can you drive and see traffic lights?

Colourblindness did you know?

Most colour blind people do see colour and it is rare to only see black and white. It is in the way that colour blind people see colour that is different, making it difficult to distinguish colours as a non-colour blind person would.

Colour wheel workaround in Inkscape and other graphics programs

Anyone learning about art will have come across the colour wheel, that thing that is really useless to the colourblind. Graphics programs tend to default to this method. Inkscape, for example, shows the following as default for colour selection.



My workaround to ensure that I am using at least a smattering of the correct colour is to use the HTML or Hex code colours. To do this, say for example I want a skin tone, I would search google using the term, "skin tone hex code". Google will return several skin tone values in Hex which will look like, "#ffe0bd"

Within Inkscape, you would then replace the code in the RGBA box with "ffe0bdff". The hash mark (#) is not required but the "ff" needs to be added to the end as this tells the program that you want a solid color.

You can use this workaround in many graphics packages. In fact, the only free package where I have yet to find a workaround is in Sculptris, which is a real shame as it is otherwise a fantastic graphics tool.

What's your workaround. I'd love to know.

Colourblindness - Did you know?

According to the New Yorker the found of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg suffers from red/green colourblindness. He told the magazine, "Blue is the richest color for me," which is why Facebooks domineering colour is blue.