Excel add-in that may help the color blind

[Jim Cone]

Hello,

A brand new, free Excel add-in is available from my website
that may be of help to color blind Excel users.

"Determine Colors" adds a new menu item to the cell right-click popup
menu that displays the color name for the cell ...
interior color
pattern color
border color
font color
plus the sheet tab color (where applicable).

Comes with a brief Word.doc install/use file.
Download from (no registration required) ...
http://www.realezsites.com/bus/primitivesoftware

Comments and suggestions about the program solicited.

 

[Bob Phillips]

Jim,

Haven't tried it, but how about tying it into the speech add-in and get it
to echo back the colours? Now that would be useful.

--
HTH

Bob Phillips

(replace somewhere in email address with gmail if mailing direct)

 

[Jim Cone]

Bob,
Interesting concept, however, I have avoided all contact with the
Speech capabilities in Excel. Doubt if I will change now.

As simple as it may sound, the existing Determine Colors program
was very difficult to write. Peter Thornton's invaluable help is the
only reason it was completed.
For some fun, try to determine the actual border color displayed
when there are three different colors applied to the same edge. <g>
Regards,
Jim Cone


"Bob Phillips" <[email protected]>
wrote in message
Jim,
Haven't tried it, but how about tying it into the speech add-in and get it
to echo back the colours? Now that would be useful.

 

[Bob Phillips]

Jim,

I will download and play, but getting back to the speech addin, MS are
putting a lot of effort into it, so it may be getting easier to use. Can't
say as I haven't tried it yet, but it is on my to-do list.

--
HTH

Bob Phillips

(replace somewhere in email address with gmail if mailing direct)

Bob,
Interesting concept, however, I have avoided all contact with the
Speech capabilities in Excel. Doubt if I will change now.

As simple as it may sound, the existing Determine Colors program
was very difficult to write. Peter Thornton's invaluable help is the
only reason it was completed.
For some fun, try to determine the actual border color displayed
when there are three different colors applied to the same edge. <g>
Regards,
Jim Cone


"Bob Phillips" <[email protected]>
wrote in message
Jim,
Haven't tried it, but how about tying it into the speech add-in and get it
to echo back the colours? Now that would be useful.

 

[Nile_Hef]

Interesting item, and one of the few instances of a relevant product plug
that I've ever seen on a newsgroup.

I would point out that 3% of the male population in predominantly caucasian
countries are colour-blind, most being red-green 'dichromats' who have
difficulty distinguishing colours in the red-yellow-green part of the
spectrum, and a small minority (less than half a percent) being
'monochromats' who live in a completely colourless world.

We are obliged by law, in any G7 country, to cater for disabled people in
all applications offered for use by the general public. Most large
corporations have specific disability and 'accessibilty' policies that
require us take account of colour-blindness (and, in theory, users unable to
operate a pointing device) and the only reason that many of us have escaped
prosecution or discipliniary hearings is that the affected users are very
skilled at circumventing bad interface design and don't realise that they can
and should complain.

For dichromats, the theoretical solution is to use the Workbook.Colors()
property to shift the entire palette, colour by colour, up or down into the
frequency range that these users can discriminate, leaving larger 'band gaps'
around mission-critical colour replacements for red and green if they are
used for common warnings or data verification cues. Be warned, the
calculations are not trivial!

The practical solution is to design your application so that colour cues
(especially red and green conditional formatting) are *never* the only cues
presented to the user.

In the case of conditional formatting, change the font and the border
whenever you change the background colour!

For monochromats, it's usually best to give them this code snippet to impose
a custom palette, and let them reformat their workbooks On Open:

Public Sub SetPalette(Optional wbk As Excel.Workbook)

On Error Resume Next

If wbk Is Nothing Then
Set wbk = ThisWorkbook
End If

Application.ScreenUpdating = False

With wbk

' Pale grey colour gradient
' Target: top row of the two hidden rows in the palette dialogue

.Colors(17) = &HF0F0F0
.Colors(18) = &HE0E0E0
.Colors(19) = &HD0D0D0
.Colors(20) = &HC0C0C0
.Colors(21) = &HB0B0B0
.Colors(22) = &HA0A0A0
.Colors(23) = &H909090
.Colors(24) = &H808080


' Grey semitones
' Target: bottom row of the two hidden rows in the palette dialogue

.Colors(25) = &HF8F8F8
.Colors(26) = &HE8E8E8
.Colors(27) = &HD8D8D8
.Colors(28) = &HC8C8C8
.Colors(29) = &HB8B8B8
.Colors(30) = &HA8A8A8
.Colors(31) = &H989898
.Colors(32) = &H888888

' Redistribute the main greyscale sequence in
' the right-hand column of the default palette:
.Colors(15) = &HC0C0C0
.Colors(48) = &H707070
.Colors(16) = &H606060
.Colors(56) = &H404040

End With

Application.ScreenUpdating = True

End Sub

It's not a complete solution but those users will soon figure out how and
where to attack the main palette, replacing &HFF0000, &H00FF00 and &H0000FF
with differing greyscales. Go back and see the results: it is a humbling
experience to discover that they have come up with better visual design
solutions than you did.

 

[Peter T]

An interesting post, my understanding is considerably more than 3% are
affected to some degree.

For dichromats, the theoretical solution is to use the Workbook.Colors()
property to shift the entire palette, colour by colour, up or down into the
frequency range that these users can discriminate, leaving larger 'band gaps'
around mission-critical colour replacements for red and green if they are
used for common warnings or data verification cues. Be warned, the
calculations are not trivial!

As it happens I have an app in development that does all that, even 'shift'
multiple colours in one go and in various ways until user finds colours
sufficiently separated. Many other related things which might be of use to
those with colour vision impairment. These though just some side effects
large application which does much else besides colour. Unlike Jim's though
it's not intended as a free product.

As you seem to be interested in this subject if you would care to try the
early beta drop me a line.

Regards,
Peter T
pmbthornton gmail com

 

[Andy Pope]

Hi Jim,

Nice work.

I did a very quick and dirty test with the speech method, as Bob
mentioned. If you can not already use speech in excel via the Tools >
Speech option this will not work.

Format a cell and then do the right click and view the information. This
will then load all the correct settings in to the captions of the
context menu. (Obviously with your access to the code this step would be
redundant).

Then in the immediate window enter the following line.

for i=1 to 4:application.Speech.Speak _
application.CommandBars("Cell").Controls(_
"Colo&r Information").controls(i).caption:next i


You have probably already seen this...
http://www.dailydoseofexcel.com/archives/2006/05/10/the-talking-worksheet/

Cheers
Andy

 

[Jim Cone]

Andy,
Thanks for posting that link. I had not seen it.
I may yet get sucked into doing something with speech.
Regards,
Jim Cone


Hi Jim,
Nice work.
I did a very quick and dirty test with the speech method, as Bob
mentioned. If you can not already use speech in excel via the Tools >
Speech option this will not work.
Format a cell and then do the right click and view the information. This
will then load all the correct settings in to the captions of the
context menu. (Obviously with your access to the code this step would be
redundant).
Then in the immediate window enter the following line.
for i=1 to 4:application.Speech.Speak _
application.CommandBars("Cell").Controls(_
"Colo&r Information").controls(i).caption:next i

You have probably already seen this...
http://www.dailydoseofexcel.com/archives/2006/05/10/the-talking-worksheet/

Cheers
Andy

 

[Nile_Hef]

An interesting post, my understanding is considerably more than 3% are

affected to some degree.

The 3% figure holds good for the adult male population of the United Kingdom
and the continental USA, and it is the number quoted by Ben Shneiderman in
'Designing the User Interface'. Some places have higher incidences of
dichromat colour-blindness: Wikipedia quotes an 8% figure for Australia!

I've only ever written a spectrum-shifter as bespoke code for Excel users on
a 'by request' basis and I had to work it all out from scratch - the worst
part being the need for a hand-rolled 'effective wavelength' metric for RBG
codes as perceived by healthy trichromat humans. Those neat triple
bell-curves of frequency versus sensitivity for the human retina are the
start of a very, very messy calculation.

The code is owned by a former employer of mine and will never see the light
of day again. I've asked if I can put it in the public domain and all I ever
got was boilerplate pro-forma statements about banking confidentiality and
the threat of legal action.

Anyway, your idea of a user-configurable frequency shift is an interesting
approach, and a surprisingly difficult user interface design problem: none of
the popular graphics packages (Paintshop Pro, Adobe, CorelDraw) has a colour
manipulation dialogue that does exactly what you want with images, and GIMP
has a particularly loathsome 'curves' screen under the colour tools menu.

I am not the most systematic and disciplined of beta-testers but I'd enjoy
seeing your application. I can't get at my personal mail accounts from the
trading floor, but feel free to mail me as Heffernann yah oo dot com


Regards -

Nile

 

[Peter T]

Hi Nile,

I've followed this ng for some years and yours was first post I've read to
give informed comment on the issue of colour blindness. Apart of course from
Jim's addin. Whether 3% are affected or nearer 10% (the average of various
articles I've read) is immaterial. Even 1% of Excel users represents a very
large number.

I'm surprised this issue as relates to Excel has not been discussed more, eg
traffic light red & green are frequently used and liable to confuse. But
others are affected by different combinations.

It seems to me there are two solutions:
- Ensure all spreadsheets use colours that can never be confused, I think
unrealistic.
- Affected user adjust colours to suit. In Excel it's is very easy to
customise the palette and in turn update colours in use in the workbook.
Except it isn't as Excel provides a minimal and laborious interface to do
that, nor an indication of used colours other than in the selection.

Whilst I'd never advocate over use of colour in a spreadsheet, Excel has
fantastic and un-exploited possibilities for doing things with colour. For
certain purposes more useful even than other applications designed
specifically for colour processing.

I have also written to you off-line.

Regards,
Peter T