Team:Leiden/Inclusion
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Rapidemic
Inlcusion and diversity
We were first introduced to the importance of including the color-blind when we were searching through scientific articles in subteams. A paper about a color-based detection method showed several pictures that a normal eye would register as a clear color change. One of our teammates, however, was unable to distinguish between the colors and had to ask for help in order to interpret a paper like this. If the color change in this article would have been the basis of an actual test kit, he and millions of others would likely not have been able to interpret the result. To include the color-blind in our project, we decided to make our wiki and our experimental output color-blind friendly. We also provide future teams with the tools to do the same, so color-blind people will be included for all years to come!
The barriers for color-blind people in science
Color blindness affects a substantial portion of the global population. Around 8 percent of males and 0.5 percent of females of western descent are affected by the most common form of color blindness, namely red-green color blindness1. This, however, is just one of the many forms color blindness can take. The term color blindness is not accurate; only very few people see the world without any color at all. Most people affected by color blindness rather have difficulty distinguishing different hues of two or more colors. A more accurate description of the impairment might thus be 'color uncertainty'.
Color blindness is most commonly caused by a developmental defect that arises during the formation of the color sensing cones in the eye1,2. This causes other cones or even the light-sensing rods to take over the sensing of this particular color, causing them to have a similar appearance to the viewer. Different forms of color blindness are:
- Monochromacy: This is often referred to as 'total color blindness'. It is caused by the total absence or dysfunction of the cones in the eye, which restricts the viewer to only see differences in lightness, forming a black and white image, or see one singular color, caused by the lack or dysfunction of more than one type of cone receptor. This encompasses rod monochromacy/achromatopsia, which causes the viewer to only register differences between light and dark, and cone monochromacy, which prevents the viewer from observing more than one color.
- Dichromacy: This is the result when one type of color-sensing cone is missing in the eye, which causes the other cones to take over the function of this receptor. Colors that others can clearly distinguish can look the same as a result of this defect. The most common forms of color blindness, protanopia and deuteranopia, fall in this category and manifest themselves as an incapability to distinguish several shades of red, yellow and green1,3. A rarer form of color vision deficiency is blue/yellow color deficiency, or tritanopia. People that suffer from this form of color blindness confuse blue with green and yellow with violet, and commonly also have issues distinguishing red and green4.
- Anomalous trichromacy: A person affected by this color vision deficiency can possess all color-sensing receptors, however, one or more of these differ in sensitivity. This causes effects that appear similar to those of dichromacy, but the function of the affected receptors is not completely lost; the viewer can still perceive some of the color with the receptor. Protanomaly is an example of such color deficiency, where the effects are the same as protanopia but to a lesser extent.
Fig. 1 How non-color vision deficient people see red and green
Fig. 2 How color vision deficient people see red and green
Though not always recognized by society, color blindness can be a major hindrance to people. It can lead to problems in education, job applications, driving a car but also simpler tasks like cooking. For example, ripe and unripe vegetables are more challenging to tell apart from each other5. In figures 1 and 2, you can see how color vision deficient people perceive red and green compared to people without color vision deficiency. Sadly, color deficient people will not be able to see a clear difference between these two figures.
Color blindness in the field of scientific research
Color blindness can be a major hindrance in academic research. Color-blind people can have problems with reading certain figures, like microscopic fluorescence images, heat maps, or graphs with shades of red and green (see Fig. 3 and Fig. 4). This causes the results of some measurement methodologies to become hard, or even impossible, to read for people affected by color blindness. As approximately 8.5 percent of the population is affected by some form of color blindness, this needs to be taken into account to assure equal access to scientific data for everyone2.
Fig. 3.1 Heat map without color blindness. (Figure adapted from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_map)
Fig. 3.2 Heat map with color blindness. Reds and greens are hardly distinguishable. (Figure adapted from wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_map)
Fig. 4.1 Fluorescence microscopy without color blindness. (Figure adapted from wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorescence
_microscope)
Fig. 4.2 Fluorescence microscopy with color blindness. Reds and greens are hardly distinguishable. (Figure adapted from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Fluorescence_microscope)
Are you color-blind?
To see if you are color-blind, we made some Ishihara plates containing a word that is very dear to our hearts. Can you see the word? You can test yourself for different types of color blindness. We also added a plate that can only be read by color-blind people to give people that are able to observe color the experience of missing the clue. Lastly, we also included a plate that can be seen by everyone, both those who can and cannot see color. This inclusive plate contains some colors that you may have seen before since it is the color basis of our wiki for exactly this reason!
General 1
General 2
General 3
Protanopia
Protanomaly
Tritanopia
Color-blind only
Visible for all!
Made using the GitHub code by Francis Couzo
How did we include the color-blind in our project?
To ensure our wiki is accessible to people that are affected by color blindness, we used filters to mimic different types of color blindness. This way we could observe whether our wiki was indeed color-blind friendly. The main colors we used in our wiki; green (#007972) and orange (#fe9901) can be seen by people with all types of color blindness. The graphs in our results have also been made accessible by using distinguishable colors and by using shapes to differentiate lines.
What does our wiki look like for someone with color blindness?
By moving the orange slider you can compare the images below. The left side of the image contains a filter that mimics how color-blind people would see them. On the right side you can see how people with no color blindness would see the them.
Deuteranopia
Protanopia
Tritanopia
Besides our wiki, we also made sure that color-blind people could interpret the output of our diagnostic device. We, therefore, made pictures of our well-plates and subjected these to a color blindness filter to check if the color change was clear. The color change was indeed visible with several types of color blindness (see figures below). To make sure they can not only see a change in color but also interpret it correctly, we plan to make a reference card to go along with our kit. This reference card contains a visual of the color and an indication of the interpretation of that color next to it. This way people do not have to base their interpretation of the test result on a mere verbal description of the color but they can actually see for themselves and directly compare the result to the reference.
What does our test result look like for someone with color blindness?
By moving the orange slider you can compare the images of the test results below. The left side of the image contains a filter that mimics how color-blind people would see them. On the right side you can see how people with no color blindness would see the them.
Deuteranopia
Protanopia
Tritanopia
How to include the color-blind in your future iGEM project
How to make your wiki color-blind friendly?
- Check your wiki color scheme using online tools. This way, your figures will fit nicely and aesthetically on your wiki. If you tweak the colors of your figures later, your colors might look a bit odd or not as intuitive, so be aware of that! Try to find a balanced color scheme, suitable for color-blind people as well, and continue from there. There are many online tools that can help you with this. A few of them are listed below. See for yourself which works best for you:
- Check whilst making figures whether they are color-blind friendly. Color Oracle is a program that filters your screen to show you how it would look for color-blind people. In Adobe Photoshop you can also turn on a color-blind filter. You can do this by going to View > Proof Setup > Color Blindness7.
- For transforming fluorescence microscopy imagesa nice tool might be Fiji, an imaging processing package of imageJ that can process these images. In this video you can see how to change colors.
- Don't use red and green together. Most color-blind people are not able to distinguish these two colors. Other less distinguishable colors are green & brown, blue & purple, green & blue, light green & yellow, blue & grey, green & grey, green & black6;
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Preferably, use textures instead of color to define different asp ects, e.g. dots, squares, stripes (see Fig. 5 and Fig. 6)
Fig. 5 Textures and greyscales are also distinguishable for the color-blind.
Fig. 6. Aside from colors, the textures of the line (squares, circles, etc.) also define the different lines.
- Use higher contrast, as this is something color-blind people are able to see. The difference in lightness and saturation also helps to distinguish colors6,8.
- Use shades or greyscales instead of different colors. These are readable for everyone6,7.
- If you really need or want to use color, use combinations that are also clear for color-blind people such as magenta/green, cyan/red and yellow/blue7
Fig. 7. As you can see, these color combinations are also distinguishable for color-blind people, and therefore useful for figures
- If you need a color to convey an emotion, make sure you also add a symbol or text that conveys this meaning as well6
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While making your wiki, check via the renderer of your developer tools to see how the page looks for the color-blind. This way you can see whether everything is still clearly readable and understandable for the color-blind. Below there is a step-by-step explanation of how to do this (for Chrome).
Fig. 8 Step 1
- Press F12, or Crtl+ Shift + I, or any other way to open your DevTools.
-
Click on the three dots standing for "Customize and control DevTools"
Fig. 9 Step 2
- Select "More tools"
- Click on "Rendering" from the list
Fig. 10 Step 3 and 4
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Scroll all the way down below where you find options for "Emulate vision deficiencies"
Fig. 11 Step 5
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Select the color vision deficiency of your choice to see your page with a color blindness mimicing filter. Be aware! Once you close the DevTools again, this filter disappears!
Fig. 12 Step 6
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Check whether everything on your page is readable and clear.
Fig. 13 Step 7
- Keep in mind, this is not only for designing your wiki and figures, but also for your product. For example, do not use red and green buttons as those are indistinguishable for color-blind.
For the color-blind
The tools listed above are mainly for those designing a figure or wiki page. However, what should you do as a color-blind person if you come across a non-color-blind friendly figure, but still want to be able to understand it? Luckily, there are also assistive tools available that help the color-blind see figures with better discrimination of colors, like Visolve or mobile apps like Color Blind Pal. Below you can find an example of Visolve. The first row shows the original and what is visible for color-blind people, the second row shows what the transformed figure would look like.
Fig. 14 Undistinguishable colors like red and green are after a transformation by Visolve, better visible through their filter for color-blind people.
How to raise awareness in the scientific community?
Awareness of color blindness is already important early on in primary school, as colors are often used for teaching, especially for young children. Therefore, teachers should be able to recognize color blindness of their students. The inability to recognize color blindness in children might cause them to feel inferior, due to continuous contradictory corrections caused by the difficulty of distinguishing color names9. Undiagnosed color blindness might therefore have psychological consequences5. Older students might also experience trouble in subjects like biology, chemistry, and more. For example, reactions depending on a change of color, could sometimes not be clearly visible for the color-blind students5,9. Nevertheless, color blindness can remain undiagnosed for quite some time, as people learn colors by patterns. Trees are green, ripe tomatoes are red, and so on.
Therefore, to assist both undiagnosed and diagnosed color vision deficient people, we should make all of our scientific figures understandable and readable for them as well. Awareness of color blindness in the scientific community is important to make science inclusive for this large portion of society. That is why we have provided this color blindness guide for the iGEM community. As future scientists, we should continue spreading awareness to make our results color-blind friendly. So be sure to convince your PIs or other (aspiring) scientists at your institute to take a look at this page and encourage others to include the color-blind in their future publications to make science more accessible!
Altogether, while making, for instance, designs, webpages and figures, keep in mind that not everyone might perceive these the way you do. It takes little effort to keep them color-blind friendly!
References
- Color vision deficiency: MedlinePlus Genetics. Ghr.nlm.nih.gov (2020). at https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/color-vision-deficiency
- Deeb, S. (2005). The molecular basis of variation in human color vision. Clinical Genetics, 67(5), 369–377. doi:10.1111/j.1399-0004.2004.00343.x
- Color vision deficiency. Aoa.org (2020). at https://www.aoa.org/patients-and-public/eye-and-vision-problems/glossary-of-eye-and-vision-conditions/color-deficiency(Accessed: 24th August 2020)
- Colblindor – All about Color Blindness. Color-blindness.com (2020). at https://www.color-blindness.com/(Accessed: 24th August 2020)
- Bailey, J. Color Blindness: Psychological Effects. (2013).
- Tips for designing scientific figures for color blind readers. Sommersault1824 at https://www.somersault1824.com/tips-for-designing-scientific-figures-for-color-blind-readers/color-blindness-palette/(Accessed: 24th August 2020)
- Spiro, M. How to make scientific figures accessible to readers with color-blindness | ASCB. ASCB (2020). at https://www.ascb.org/science-news/how-to-make-scientific-figures-accessible-to-readers-with-color-blindness/(Accessed: 24th August 2020)
- Wong, B. Points of view: Color blindness. Nature Methods 8, 441-441 (2011).
- Gordon, N. Colour blindness. Public Health 112, 81-84 (1998).