OT: Colorblindess (was Re: [TriLUG] Mandrake/Redhat usability.)

[Jeremy Portzer]

On Sun, 2002-10-06 at 19:46, Tanner Lovelace wrote:
> 
> As far as the side progress indicators are concerned, do you have any
> numbers on how many people are red-green color blind *enough so that
> the side bar is useless to them*?  Also, like I said
> before, the sidebar, while nice, is not integral to the functioning of
> the installer.  You can do everything in the installer without having
> to worry about the sidebar.

A large number of people are red-green colorblind; I've seen anything
from 8% to 12% of Caucasian males.  Anecdotally, my father is
colorblind, the guy across the hall is, and so is my next-door
neighbor.  (For females it's only about 0.5% of the population due to
the X-linked nature of red-green colorblindness.)  Almost all "real
world" interfaces, such as traffic signals and signs, retail packaging,
etc, is designed with this in mind.  There are plenty of other colors to
choose from!

Good page on red-green colorblindness in computer interface design here:
http://www.designmatrix.com/pl/cyberpl/cftcb.html

(Note that red-green colorblind people often see red and green as
"brown," so there shouldn't be any distinctions between brown and red or
green either).

--Jeremy