I got a reminder of the importance of universal accessibility this morning from an unexpected source.
My wife has a rare genetic form of color blindness that only exists for women; tritanopia. She inherited it from her mom, and one of her two sisters has it as well. It’s a blue/yellow color blindness, which practically means that certain shades of brown and purple are indistinguishable, as are some shades of orange and pink. A few years ago Apple added a filter for it, which means she can distinguish those on her phone, and use her phone camera to look at things when she’s not sure. But in general it doesn’t have a huge impact.
But one side effect is that she can’t see highlighter yellow. We joke that this makes it much easier to buy secondhand academic books, since you can’t see the last owner’s highlights. But it never occurred to me there was a more practical problem.
Today we’re at the dentist together, and they hand her a form, and as people often do on legal documents, the places where she’s supposed to sign and initial are highlighted with a marker...which she can’t see.
Turns out, that’s a real common issue for her. :/
P.S. Amusing side story. Highlighter yellow is *also* tennis ball yellow. They look white to her. I long ago told my kids about this. But last year my daughter was editing Beyoncé’s Oscar video. If you saw it, you’ll recall that *everything* in that video is tennis ball yellow. Even the violins. She warned Beyoncé that NTSC color doesn’t really support that shade, and since the Oscar video gets uploaded via analog satellite links, it wasn’t going to be exact. She also happens to mention my wife’s color blindness. Which is why we got a fun request from my daughter before the Oscars. “Beyoncé’s curious what color Mollie will see in the video.” (!) The answer was that in the walk-in scene the outfits looked white. But she could see a bit of yellow fading in and out in the main show. And it turned out that wasn’t coincidence. The color was done slightly differently in the opening scene. So that’s our moment of fame adjacency. :)
#accessibility #beyhive
https://youtu.be/4aeDlZOD-B0
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(JLGatewood) 
Good morning 
