ColAR is a mobile application that supports colorblind people in daily life and provides a simulation for people with normal color vision. We provide a mobile version of the app as well as a 'limited-feature' headset version for Cardboard.
Color blindness is the decreased ability to distinguish certain colors in the human color spectrum. Red-green color blindness is the most common form, followed by blue-yellow color blindness and total color blindness. It affects approximately 1 in 12 men (8%) and 1 in 200 women (0,5%) among people with Northern European descent. Men are much more likely to be colorblind than women because the genes responsible for the most common, inherited color blindness are on the X chromosome.
There are three main deficiencies:
- Deuteranopia
- Protanopia
- Tritanopia
Our application addresses two main use cases for people that suffer from color deficiency.
In this modality, the user wants to distinguish between colors along the axis of color space for which they have limited discrimination. Hence, color recognition is not required.
In this modality, the user wants to know the normal color of an object in the scene or wants to highlight a specific user-selected color.
Simulation: this scene allows people with normal vision to experience color deficiency.
Correction: this scene assists people with color deficiency while relying on following correction techniques.
Shifting of the colors in order to improve the color perception by a color-deficient viewer. Implementation is based on the LMS daltonization algorithm.
Pop out specific user-selected colors and suppress the brightness of all other colors. The implementation is based on the paper "ColourID: Improving Colour Identification for People with Impaired Colour Vision" by Flatla et. al.
By using touch input, the user can get the name of the color at the touched location. The output is provided as a written label on screen.
We provide a way for not-impaired users to understand the differences between color blind vision with and without using a certain correction technique. In Simulation mode, the user can select Magnifying glass mode and can navigate the scene using the provided lens. This feature is implemented through Vuforia markers.
Unity3D, C#, HLSL (OpenGL), Google Cardboard