Colorblindness and Usability
I was talking nerd stuff with Doug last night and he started talking about how lots of websites don’t take colorblind people into consideration in their design process. I’ve been soaking up usability articles since October and I cannot seem to recall one article that even so much mentioned anything about taking into account those in the population who are color blind. “An estimated nine to twelve percent of the male population suffers from some form of color vision deficiency, commonly called ‘color blindness.’ It is important for computer interface designers to take into account and eliminate, if possible, any potential confusions that can arise because of color vision deficiencies.” (source) I’ve read about working with expandable text size and screen readers, but nothing on proper contrasts and such for color blind people. I’ve found a few good leads that I’m probably going to spend the rest of the day reading. Tim also brought in this book, Don’t Make Me Think, that I started looking through yesterday about web usability and common sense (complete with lots of pretty pictures!). So much reading! My brain is already over saturated.
Articles I’m going to check out:
- Colorblindness and Usability.
- Topics in Usability: Color Blindness.
- Usability Interface Accommodating Color Blindness.
Under New Management
On Wednesday night when Kasey and I got back to the pad after going to the park and Wal-Mart, we saw Dave sitting out on his front porch and he said hi to us as usual. We started talking and he told us that some big company out in Cali had bought our apartment complex and that everything would be changing. One thing I have really enjoyed about IC is that it is small and locally owned. If I needed something fixed, I called Dave, told him about it and he got it fixed… that day. Dave is a fantastic property manager, I hate that he is out of a job. I remember one night there was a huge storm and I didn’t remember if I had closed the sunroof on my car. I stepped outside to check, and he was out in the parking lot with an umbrella making sure everything was rolled up and locked. Now we have to submit our requests in writing or fax them to the main office over on some street far away. Fax them? Like I have a fax machine at my apartment. It took them two days to send someone over to fix our AC which is unacceptable, especially in this heat. On my way to work this morning I met the new property manager in the parking lot. She introduced herself and seemed like a nice lady, with her big black Mercedes SUV.
Last Day at COBA
I really didn’t want to get out of bed this morning. But today is going to be a good last day, except that I forgot to clock in when I got to the office. I lose. “It’s Friday. End of the week. And the last day Kate’s going to be at COBA for the next four months. We’ve hired three people to take her place …” (more of what Tim had to say about my departure) We had a “going away party” complete with cokes and donuts in Charlie’s office for me and Joseph this morning… although Joseph is moving up to ITDS to work on his PhD and I’ll be back in mid-December. I got a card with lots of sweet messages from my co-workers. Today is also newbie orientation for the lab attendants. So at 11:30 the web dev team is going to run over to Jimmy Johns and pick up the sandwiches for their lunch and take them upstairs for all of us to eat. Hooray for being important and for free food!
I’m going to miss these guys. And football season too!