tools

nColor — A Color Picker

What is it?

The nColor color picker allows to select and compare colors in various simulations of color-blind vision. This is a simple HTML page with a JavaScript script and style properties. This page should work on most browsers, unless script and stylesheet interpretation have been deactivated.

How does it work?

The easy way is to try current version of nColor. Instructions for use are included in the page.

What if I want a copy?

Just save the page on your hard disk and use it as you wish.

Besides

Did you know that colorblindness is affecting 8 % of men and 0.4 % of women of Caucasian type ? Colorblindness is a generic term which covers different types of visual deficiencies related to perception of red, green and blue components of color.

Some perceive all 3 parts but with weaknesses in some area of the light spectrum, the trichromats, others simply do not perceive one part, the dichromats. The following table lists specific anomalies within these main categories.

Repartition of some visual anomalies
  trichromats dichromats deficiency 100 %
protanopes 1.0 % 1.0 % red 25
deuteranopes 4.9 % 1.1 % green 75
tritanopes n/a 0.002 % blue 0.0
achromatopes n/a 0.003 % all 0.0

We can see that most deficiencies occur in the red-green range. As a consequence, Web designers might be well inspired to check that the color set of their pages remains acceptable at least to protanopes and deuteranopes.

Acknowledgments: This short introduction is an interpretation of Christine Rigden's work. The different nColor visual emulations are based on her work.

History

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