Blog Posts About: color

This post is an issue of the Common Craft Newsletter. Subscribe here.

When we started publishing Common Craft videos in 2007, we learned a valuable lesson. Educators quickly requested versions of the videos with subtitles so that they could be more accessible, especially for those with hearing impairments. Since then, we've been diligent about using open captions in English for videos in our library.

Readable Videos offered another lesson. I recently appeared on a show called Instructional Designers in Offices Drinking Coffee (IDIODC). We talked about Readable Videos and what it means to create a video with no voice-over. The audience asked about the accessibility of Readable videos and this kicked off a bit of brainstorming. Since then, I've been learning and experimenting with ways to make Readable videos useful to as many people as possible.

Lessons Learned

Because Readable Videos require reading, we need to consider accessibility for those with visual impairments. The choice of color, for example, is important because of color blindness and color insensitivity. About 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women have color blindness or CVD (Color Vision Deficiency).

How to make a Readable Video More Accessible

Red-green color blindness is the most common form, so we want to avoid it in videos:

 

 

 

 

The contrast between colors is also a challenge. We want to use high-contrast colors that pop.

 

 

 

 

 

Avoid Using Color to Indicate Importance

It may seem logical to use color to indicate importance in a sentence. However, this is not as accessible as other options because the color may not be obvious to everyone. Consider this sentence:

- When you come to the end, you'll need to stop.

A more accessible version uses an underline instead of color, as color may not be visible to everyone:

- When you come to the end, you'll need to stop.

 

There's More to Learn

We are getting close to publishing a comprehensive online course on how to create professional, polished (and accessible!) Readable Videos. Stay tuned!

I've been a long time fan of Neil deGrasse Tyson and included a section about his work in the Art of Explanation. What I appreciate is his role in making physics more understandable to non-scientists. He's a great explainer and someone who continues to have an impact. 

While I've never studied physics or astrophysics, I have a fascination with the subject. Part of what fascinates me is the idea that physics often explains how the universe works. The laws of physics, for the most part, have stood the test of time, and understanding them means understanding the world around you. As an explainer, that's a strong foundation of fact to build upon.

Tyson hosts a long-running online show/podcast called StarTalk and a recent episode about color caught my eye, no pun intended. :) In the episode, the discussion turns to the color of an apple and the difference between the human eye's perception of the color vs. what it really is in terms of physics. Here's the show:

This reminds me of seeing telescopic photos of objects like the crab nebula. As a younger person I imagined what it would be like to see it in person. Then I learned that the images are representations and the human eye would not see what's in the image. This bothered me for a while. Why do we care about an image that's not a real representation? Is it just art?

Over time I discovered that I had it backward. The perception of the human eye is just that, a perception. Just because we see something, like the color of an apple or nebula, doesn't mean that's what it is in reality. We can ask: How would a red apple look to a dog, or a housefly? The image their brain produces seems like reality to them, just like it does to us. Who's to say our perception is the "right" one?

The only way to know what's "real" is by looking at it scientifically, the way a physicist would. As Neil deGrasse Tyson says in the video above, the color of the apple is really defined by what it's not.