Increasing Web Accessibility Through an Assisted Color Specification Interface for Colorblind People
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Interaction Design and Architecture(s) Journal - IxD&A, N. 5-6, 2009, pp. 41-48 Increasing Web accessibility through an assisted color specification interface for colorblind people Antonella Foti Giuseppe Santucci Dipartimento di Informatica e Sistemistica Dipartimento di Informatica e Sistemistica Sapienza Università degli studi di Roma Sapienza Università degli studi di Roma [email protected] [email protected] 1. In order to be effective it focuses on a subset of the ABSTRACT accessibility issues, dealing with problems associated Nowadays web accessibility refers mainly to users with severe with hypo-sight and colorblindness. In fact, it is the disabilities, neglecting colorblind people, i.e., people lacking a authors' belief that, in order to address affectively chromatic dimension at receptor level. As a consequence, a wrong accessibility issues, it is mandatory to focus on a usage of colors in a web site, in terms of red or green, together specific class of users at a time, addressing only the with blue or yellow, may result in a loss of information. Color problems that are relevant for that class. As an example, models and color selection strategies proposed so far fail to while dealing with colorblind people it is crucial to accurately address such issues. This article describes a module of ensure color separation between plain text and the VisAwis (VISual Accessibility for Web Interfaces) project hyperlink text; such an activity is totally useless for that, following a compromise between usability and accessibility, people impaired by hypo-sight. allow color blind people to select distinguishable colors taking 2. It defines a set of strategies and metrics to automatically into account their specific missing receptor. adapt (i.e., transcode) any Web page, according to a specific disability, improving in a measurable way the Categories and Subject Descriptors page accessibility. D.2.2 [Design Tools and Techniques]: User interfaces. This paper presents a new module of the system, i.e., an assisted color specification environment for colorblind persons. The General Terms environment is necessary to increase the degree of usability, Human Factors. allowing colorblind users to configure the system according to their needs, following a compromise between accessibility and usability. Keywords Colorblindness, transcoding, assistive technologies, color Nielsen, in [17], states that technical accessibility is a pre- specification, usability, accessibility. condition for usability: if users can not access the content of web pages, they can not use the site. So accessibility is necessary but 1. INTRODUCTION not sufficient for ensuring usability. Even if a site is theoretically accessible, because the web developers follow accessibility The accessibility of Web content is gaining an increasing interest standards, it can still be very difficult to use for people with and several research activities deal with standards and disabilities. It is no surprising that technical accessibility is methodologies for enforcing Web sites accessibility (see, e.g., the insufficient to ensure ease of use and ease of learning and high Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 [1,2]). In performance user. spite of all these efforts most of the actual Web sites are still not accessible at all. The reason of that is twofold: from on side, most Moreover, as a matter of fact, nowadays web accessibility refers of Web site developers are unaware of the actual standards and mainly to users with severe disabilities, neglecting colorblind methodologies for accessibility; on the other side, such standards people, i.e., people lacking a chromatic dimension at receptor are still too broad to address in an effective way all the level. As a consequence, a wrong usage of colors in a web site, in accessibility issues. terms of red or green, together with blue o yellow, may result in a loss of information; the Vis-A-Wis system allows for presenting The Vis-A-Wis (VISual Accessibility for Web Interfaces) [3] colorblind users with distinguishable colors and the assisted color project attacks the Web accessibility problem following two specification environment allows for easily customizing the different strategies: system. On the other hand, usual color selection strategies rely on Interaction Design and Architecture(s) Journal - IxD&A, N. 5-6, 2009, pp. 41-48 color models that are not adequate for colorblind people and, as a Brettel [9] proposes an algorithm able to simulate colorblindness consequence, usability becomes a key issue. to person with normal color vision. The Brettel algorithm represents color stimuli as vectors in a three-dimensional LMS Summarizing, the contribute of the paper is the following: space, and the simulation algorithm is expressed in terms of 1. It relies on a transcoding environment (VisAwis) that transformations of this space. The LMS space represents the address in a specific way the colorblind accessibility wavelengths perceived by the three classes of cones in the retina issue; that give life to the colors (the short (S), middle (M), and long (L) wave sensitive cones, each of which contains a different photo 2. It provides an assisted novel color specification pigment. Protanopes lack the L-photo pigment, while environment that allows dichromats to easily select deuteranopes lack the M-photo pigment. Tritanopes, the rare third distinguishable colors using a color model tailored for kind of dichromats, lack the S-photo pigment. their specific receptor disorder; To ensure accessibility Web designers (should) follow the WCAG 3. It simulates their choices for trichromats, allowing web 2.0 formulae and guidelines. Such formulae have been tested by designers to evaluate how their web pages are perceived the research center of the University of Toronto [16] and the way by dichromats. of calculating the contrast has yielded positive results over a wide The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: Section 2 sample of people with deficient vision. The formulae may yield presents related work; Section3 recall the human perception of results slightly different depending on the type of screen (LCD or colors focusing on dichromatic vision and presents the metrics CRT) and display settings. In the following we recall the WCAG implemented for evaluating our transcoding strategies; Section 4 2.0 standard formulae. presents the assisted color specification environment for Color brightness (WCAG 2.0: Technique 2.2.1 [priority 3]), is dichromats; Section 5 presents some conclusions and future work. determined by the following formula: 2. RELATED WORK Normal color vision is trichromatic, i.e., it is based on the stimuli coming from three different receptor types, responding to ((Red * 299) + (Green * 587) + (Blue * 114)) / (1) different light wavelengths. Dichromatic people are affected by 1000 some disorder involving one or more receptors and cannot accurately distinguish some colors. Approximately 7% of males and less than 1% of females are dichromatic and are unable to where <Red, Green, Blue> refer to the intensity of the three discriminate some color stimuli that normal color vision can primary components in a usual RGB monitor and the three distinguish. Those people are sometimes referred to as coefficients are based on the V() [23] function representing the colorblinds. The most common form of dichromacy (afflicting relative sensitivity of the human eyes to light of different about 2% of males) is red-green color blindness, or red-green wavelengths. This calculation produces a value in the range from dichromacy, which itself split into two different types: whereas 0 - 255. For ease of reading, it is essential that text have a people affected by protanopia are less sensitive to red light, reasonable difference from its background and the guidelines deuteranopia or deuteranomaly are less sensitive to green light. states that it must be greater than 125. The research activity that inspired our work is the simulation for The difference of color (hue) is determined by the following trichromats of dichromatic color perception began with the formula: German writer and scientist Goethe (1810). The first rigorous analysis is provided by excerpts from the report On (max (Red 1, Red 2) - min (Red 1, Red 2)) + Colorblindness [6], presented by the engineer William Pole to the (maximum (Green 1, Green 2) - (2) prestigious English Royal Society of London, on 19th June 1856. min (Green 1, Green 2)) + (max (Blue 1, Blue 2) - Although the text is quite dated, it contains a clear and precise min (Blue 1, Blue 2)) description altered vision, typical of individuals suffering from a certain kind of blindness to colors. According to Pole's report, blue and yellow are perfectly distinguishable, and are seen by where <Red1, Green1, Blu1> and <Red2, Green2, Blu2> are the dichromats as normal color vision people do. In more recent three primary components of the two colors. times, Boynton (1979) in a excellent text, Human Color Vision, which includes a section titled, “What do Red-Green Defective According to the guidelines, the difference of color between the Observers Really See?” asserts that “the issue of what dichromats text and the background must be greater than 500. Then a large really see probably can never be fully resolved” [7]. The past difference in brightness (> 125) and a large difference in hues (> experiments suggest that both protanopes and deuteranopes see 500) indicate a high degree of legibility. the same blue at 470 nm and the same yellow at 575 nm as It is worth noting that, even if the Toronto tests gave positive trichromats (Judd, 1948) [8]. A more recent paper, “What do results, these formulae are not explicitly thought for dichromats. color blind people see?” (Viénot et al. 1995; see also Brettel et al. 1997) [9], contains color illustrations purporting to show to There are a number of approaches [23] to allow users to select normal subjects what a picture of flowers would look like to colors but, to the best of our knowledge, no one refers specifically dichromats.