Notably, the tool includes a drop-down menu to simulate different types of colour blindness. The menu includes simulations for protanomaly (red-weak), protanopia (red-blind), deuteranomaly (green-weak), deuteranopia (green-blind), tritanomaly (blue-weak), tritanopia (blue-blind), achromatomaly (RGB-weak), and achromatopsia (RGB-blind). Furthermore, it can also simulate visuals for people with mild, medium, and serious partial blindness. Notably, as per statistics, colour vision deficiencies affect around 300 million people around the world. Usually, most people with colour blindness cannot observe shades of red and green while in some cases, people can also have blue colour blindness. However, in extremely rare cases, some people can also have monochromacy, which means they are unable to perceive any colour and see things only in shades of white and black.
How to use Chrome tool to test website accessibility for colour blind?
As a developer, you can use this feature by launching Google Chrome and then heading to the browser’s developer tools. In Google Chrome’s developer tools section, there is a new section titled emulate vision deficiencies which features a drop-down menu of several vision limitations. When you select either of the colour blindness conditions, the tool would change the colours of your website accordingly. Thus, it will allow you to see how a person with that particular condition (for instance, protanopia) will view your website.
However, this development tool for colour blindness is only available on Chrome’s Canary build for now. It is likely to be officially released only after the next three months later, along with Chrome 82 in a more stable channel.
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Moreover, it also helps developers in determining contrast issues on their website. Interestingly, Mozilla has also launched its own developers’ tool for colour vision disabilities. However, accessibility experts have reportedly described it as inaccurate. But, the introduction of the tool by the two web browsers is indeed a welcome step nonetheless.
