A review of color blindness for microscopists: guidelines and tools for accommodating and coping with color vision deficiency.
"Color blindness" is a variable trait, including individuals with just slight color vision deficiency to those rare individuals with a complete lack of color perception. Approximately 75% of those with color impairment are green diminished; most of those remaining are red diminished. Red-Green color impairment is sex linked with the vast majority being male. The deficiency results in reds and greens being perceived as shades of yellow; therefore red-green images presented to the public will not illustrate regions of distinction to these individuals. Tools are available to authors wishing to accommodate those with color vision deficiency; most notable are components in FIJI (an extension of ImageJ) and Adobe Photoshop. Using these tools, hues of magenta may be substituted for red in red-green images resulting in striking definition for both the color sighted and color impaired. Web-based tools may be used (importantly) by color challenged individuals to convert red-green images archived in web-accessible journal articles into two-color images, which they may then discern.
Shriners Hospital for Children,Micro-Imaging Center,3101 SW Sam Jackson Park Road,Portland,OR 97239,USA.
Douglas R
DR
Keene
D001296:Audiovisual Aids; D003117:Color Vision Defects; D017408:Guidelines as Topic; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D008853:Microscopy / Q000379:methods*
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