Forum Discussion

aPrivett's avatar
aPrivett
Occasional Contributor
8 years ago

Testing with the color blind user in mind

I want an option in Playback to detect possible issues for the color blind user so that the 8% of the population who is colorblind can use our desktop applications more effectively.   In the mean t...
  • tristaanogre's avatar
    tristaanogre
    8 years ago

    If this is a feature request, you can create a new one at https://community.smartbear.com/t5/TestComplete-Feature-Requests/idb-p/TestXCompleteFeatureRequests.

     

    As it is, from what I understand of color-blindness is that there are varying degrees and "types".  For example, my brother in law is green-blue colorblind.  He can see and distinguish all other colors but green and blue he is unable to differentiate. Common among men who are color-blind is red-green. 

     

    So, for such a feature to be feasible/practical, some sort of standardized criteria would need to be created and checked against.  I'm guessing that would have to be color "ranges" either with rgb numeric values or something like the hexadecimal values in CSS stylesheets.  Since most websites use stylesheets any more, I think that would be your best place to start, to write some sort of code that, after a page is loaded, check the CSS stylesheet to see if there are any text colors within a given range sitting on a background of another given range.  

     

    I'm not familiar with any specific third party tools but a quick google search found a bunch that are usable for manual testing including some chrome extensions.  I didn't find anything for incorporating into an automated scenario, though.

     

     

tristaanogre's avatar
tristaanogre
Esteemed Contributor
8 years ago

If this is a feature request, you can create a new one at https://community.smartbear.com/t5/TestComplete-Feature-Requests/idb-p/TestXCompleteFeatureRequests.

 

As it is, from what I understand of color-blindness is that there are varying degrees and "types".  For example, my brother in law is green-blue colorblind.  He can see and distinguish all other colors but green and blue he is unable to differentiate. Common among men who are color-blind is red-green. 

 

So, for such a feature to be feasible/practical, some sort of standardized criteria would need to be created and checked against.  I'm guessing that would have to be color "ranges" either with rgb numeric values or something like the hexadecimal values in CSS stylesheets.  Since most websites use stylesheets any more, I think that would be your best place to start, to write some sort of code that, after a page is loaded, check the CSS stylesheet to see if there are any text colors within a given range sitting on a background of another given range.  

 

I'm not familiar with any specific third party tools but a quick google search found a bunch that are usable for manual testing including some chrome extensions.  I didn't find anything for incorporating into an automated scenario, though.