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A Review of Color Blindness for Microscopists: Guidelines and Tools for Accommodating and Coping with Color Vision Deficiency

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 March 2015

Douglas R. Keene
Douglas R. Keene*
Affiliation:
Shriners Hospital for Children, Micro-Imaging Center, 3101 SW Sam Jackson Park Road, Portland, OR 97239, USA
*
*Corresponding author.drk@shcc.org
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Abstract

“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.

Keywords

accommodating color blindnesssimulate vision deficiencydaltonize
Type
Review Article
Information
Microscopy and Microanalysis , Volume 21 , Issue 2 , April 2015 , pp. 279 - 289
Copyright
© Microscopy Society of America 2015 

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