What is color blindness?
Color blindness is where an individual sees colors in a different way. For example, this may result in reds, greens, browns, oranges, blues, purples, pinks, and yellows being difficult to distinguish between.
It is thought that color blindness affects between five to ten percent of the entire population of the United States. That’s anywhere from 1.6 million to 3.2 million people.
What color blind people see?
The majority of those who are colorblind see the world in a very similar way but often interpret these colors differently. For example, one of the more common forms of color blindness is a red and green color deficiency.
This is where individuals struggle to differentiate between colors including reds, greens, oranges, and browns. This can make everyday tasks such as driving a little more complicated, obstacles such as traffic lights can be challenging and dangerous, especially if they’re not familiar with the area.
There are also other types of color blindness, these include blue deficiencies and monochrome color blindness. You can also view these using our color blind vision simulator above. For the most accurate experience, we recommend uploading a recognizable image, allowing you to see different shades of color and how someone with this condition would see them.
If you’re curious to learn more about what color blindness is and how it affects people who have it, read more here. Pilestone is here to help you experience life in full color, leaving nothing to the imagination!
For example, one of the more common forms of color blindness is a red and green color deficiency. This is where individuals struggle to differentiate between colors including reds, greens, oranges, and browns. This can make everyday tasks such as driving a little more complicated, obstacles such as traffic lights can be challenging and dangerous, especially if they’re not familiar with the area.
There are also other types of color blindness, these include blue deficiencies and monochrome color blindness. You can also view these using our simulator above. For the most accurate experience, we recommend uploading a recognizable image, allowing you to see different shades of color how someone with this condition would see them.
How do I find out if I am color blind?
After using the color blind glasses simulator, if you too would like to see if you have one of the eight possible color deficiencies, you can use our free scientifically proven color blind test. This test takes no longer than two minutes to complete, providing accurate results regarding the type of color blindness (if any) and the severity of colorblindness you may or may not have.
This test takes no longer than two minutes to complete, providing accurate results regarding the type of color blindness (if any) and the severity of colourblindness you may or may not have.
How to use the colorblind simulator
You can either use our image provided our alternatively you can also upload your own. Once you’ve decided on an image, you can begin using the color blind vision simulator.
To begin, simply choose a type of color blindness which you would like to view. There are eight types to experiment with under the four categories of color blindness: deutan, protan, tritan, and black/white.
Click the type in which you’d like to view and the simulated picture will adjust accordingly. This is an accurate representation of those with that given deficiency would actually see. Why not try some family photographs, familiar places, or memorable moments in our color blind image simulator and see how they too look through the eyes of those who are color blind?
Five Easy-to-Use Online Color Blindness Simulators
1. The Best Color-Blind Simulator for Web Development: Built-In Browser Tools
Did you know that some modern-day browsers have color-blind simulations built into them? These tools help web designers create webpages that are compliant with color-blindness. Even if you're not a designer, you can use them to view webpages without visiting a website or installing a program.
At the moment, only Firefox and Chrome have these simulators. You can read more about the Firefox color-blindness simulation on their accessibility inspector help page.
Chrome doesn't have a simulator on its main branch right now, but it is currently available on its nightly dev build browser, Canary.
2. The Best Color-Blind Simulator for Webpages: Toptal Color-Blind Filter
If you want to test a website for its color-blind compatibility, try the Toptal Color-Blind Web Page Filter. The website, while sometimes slow, is effective at showing you what webpages look like through the eyes of others. Just give it a URL, choose the coverage filter, and click Fetch and Filter!.
Once the page is put through through the color-blind filter, you can see how a color-blind person perceives it. You can click through the conditions to generate a new preview for each type of color-blindness.
If you want to share what the website looks like, click on Copy filtered page URL at the bottom right. This will generate a link with which you can share the result with others. This is especially useful if you're working with someone to design a website and want to prove that its design plays well with color-blindness.
If your website passes the color-blind test, you can use the image at the bottom of the page to show visitors that your page suits their needs, regardless of any vision problems.
3. The Best Color-Blind Simulator for Images: Coblis (Color-Blind Simulator)
If you're designing an image and you're wondering how color-blind people will see it, try the Coblis (Color-Blind Simulator) website. Coblis is a web tool that makes it easy and quick to upload an image and test it against different color-deficiency examples.
To use the tool, scroll down to the middle of the page. You'll see what looks like a screenshot of an application. Don't be fooled; this isn't a screenshot! This is the actual app embedded within the webpage.
You can use the buttons to play around with the default image and get a feel for what the tool can do. When you're ready to test an image, click the Choose file button and select the file you want to upload. Now you can use the tools to experiment with different vision deficiencies and see how your image holds up.
4. The Best Color-Blind Simulator Extension: Let's Get Color-Blind
Despite its somewhat worrying name, Let's Get Color-Blind is a handy tool for checking websites on the fly. Navigate to the page you want to check, then click the browser extension at the top left to activate it.
Once it's active, you can select the different kinds of color-blindness and the website will automatically update with your settings. You can also tweak the intensity of the simulation if it's a little too strong or weak to your liking.
5. The Best Mobile App For Color-Blind Simulation: Chromatic Vision Simulator
Chromatic Vision Simulator is the most impressive color-blindness simulator on this list. It's not the best for viewing a website or an image as a color-blind person would, but it's amazing for seeing everything else through their eyes.
Chromatic Vision Simulator uses your phone's camera to create a realistic representation of color-blindness in real-time. You have four viewport options; one for normal vision and three different color deficiencies. You can toggle between them at the bottom to view the world through different eyes.
What makes the app so powerful is how you can mix and match these views. For example, you can have both the normal and protanopia views active at the same time, so you can compare and contrast the two. You can even have every view active to see the world around you as every color-blind person would.
Using Color-Blind Assistant Tools in Operating Systems
If you or someone you know suffers from color-blindness, there are tools you can use to make the operating system more color-blind friendly. This includes modifying the colors so that color-blind people can differentiate between each one better.
Not all operating systems have this feature built into them; however, if you have Windows 10, you're in luck. Check out our guide on this Windows 10 trick to better distinguish colors.
This feature lets color-blind people choose a theme that suits their needs, so they need not struggle to make out what color is what. Best of all, this filter also affects everything shown on-screen, such as web pages and images.
Making Life Easier for the Visually Impaired
If you design visual media for a living, it's a good idea to consider the color-blind and how they view your creations. Fortunately, you don't need any fancy tools to achieve this; just use a website or download an app and you can view your creative decisions through the eyes of someone else.