Creating Accessibility to Web Contents for Colorblind People

Abstract

The color is a very important asset when comes the time of interacting with other people and the ambient world, where the color may turn into the message itself. As known, about 5% of the people all over the world suffer from colorblindness, also formally called color vision deficit (CVD). It is clear that this visual impairment compromises the way those people see and interpret their surroundings and the visual messages they receive continuously. This is particularly relevant not only for those who need to correctly interpret the traffic lights — and recall that color blind because people see reds and greens in the same way —, but also for those who use the web for leisure and professional purposes daily. With this critical problem in mind, this paper proposes a new algorithm to adjust those colors that shed confusion on dichromate people (deuteranopes and protanopes). This algorithm takes advantage of a simple formula that operates on the HSV color space. The implementation of the algorithm was made by using web compliant languages, which confirm the appliance viability on web, which contributes to achieve a more inclusive visual communication. The final goal is the integration on system with the ability of performing the recoloring automatically images and text blocks, providing a better accessibility to the web pages to the CVD people, so reaching a more ergonomic design.

Keywords: Accessibility, Color, Colorblind, Recoloring, Dichromacy.

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe100147