Vischeck & Daltonize
= must have
Online Tools
FREE

If today it's not the first time you visit the Master New Media Web site, you will notice that we have changed our look & feel. If you suffer from a red/green or blue/yellow color deficit, you maybe will also notice that the Identity Bar with the links "About", "Site Map" and "Contact" (on top of this page) is easier to read for you now than it was before. This I found out by simulating color blindness with Vischeck.

Vischeck is absolutely easy to use. Just go to the Vischeck Web site, type the URL of the Web page you want to check for accessibility by color blind people, select which type of color blindness you want to simulate (red/green: Deuteranope, Protanope or blue/yellow) and click on the "Run Vischeck!" button. A view seconds later you can see how your Web page looks like for a color blind person. You also can upload images and do the test. If you use Photoshop or ImageJ you can check accessibility even more comfortably, without having to connect to the Internet, by using Vischeck Plugins, which are downloadable from the Web site.

In case you have found out that your image is not very easy to discern for color blind people, you can use Vischeck's partner tool Daltonize to correct it. You can flexibly adjust the degree of correction, compare different versions and download the image that satisfies you most by right-clicking on your mouse and selecting "Save picture as...". It is also possible to license the Daltonize algorithm for using it on your own site.

I find these two tiny tools really useful and usable. I can warmly recommend them to you. The Web site offers also vivid background information on color blindness.