Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcsun!sunic!kth.se!draken!ianf
From: ianf@nada.kth.se (Ian Feldman)
Newsgroups: comp.cog-eng
Subject: Re: The use of Red and Green
Summary: There is more to it than meets the eye ;-)
Message-ID: <3037@draken.nada.kth.se>
Date: 27 Feb 90 19:01:08 GMT
References: <44532@lanl.gov> <5468@bgsuvax.UUCP>
Reply-To: ianf@nada.kth.se (Ian Feldman)
Organization: Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden
Lines: 39

In article <5468@bgsuvax.UUCP> maner@bgsuvax.UUCP (Walter Maner) writes:
>From article <44532@lanl.gov>, by jwk@lanl.gov (John W. Keller):
>> I am developing a computer based instructional system that uses
>> the colors green and red for, what would seem to be, the obvious
>> ... 
>> It was brought to my attention that since the most common color
>> blindness is red/green that it would be difficult for some people
>> to use the visual score.
>> 
> I applaud your sensitivity.
> The obvious solution is to allow full user customization of colors.
> In addition, there should be multi-sensory redundancy such that no
> important information is presented in only one modality.

  Actually, full user customization, especially of permanent- or
  default-changing type, is definitely not the answer.  User A dis-
  covers the customization feature and replaces the defaults with what
  she finds "nice" and "pleasing" colors.  User B is then called upon to
  use the same computer/ the same copy of the program but never gets
  around to read the manuals, and even if she did, wouldn't know how
  to proceed anyway.  Thus she is forced to use someone else's defaults,
  rather than the primary well- or better-balanced ones.

  If you absolutely have to signal back to a user via colors than make
  it a combination of color-and-pattern (or shape).  Then you can keep
  one of the elements constant (non-changeable) and allow customization
  -- within reasonable borders and definitely of non-default-
  replaceable type) of the other.

  BTW: Julian Tuwim, one of the best modern Polish poets wrote once of
  tramway cars in 1930's Lodz in Poland, that were called (and marked)
  as "red 2", "green-with-stripes 11" and so on [am not sure about the 
  exact combinations though]. I was subsequently told, that the reason for
  that was the fact that there were plenty of illiterates among the
  lower-class workers there.  Makes one wonder how such bi-type marking
  principle was arrived at, however.

--Ian Feldman /  ianf@nada.kth.se || uunet!nada.kth.se!ianf
             / "Go ahead, make my day, tell me to RTFM"