ColourID: Improving Colour Identification for People with Impaired Colour Vision

Being able to identify colours is a fundamental human activity; colour identification helps us work, get dressed, prepare food, and keep safe. But for the 5% of the world with impaired colour vision (ICV), colour identification is often a challenge, resulting in frustration and confusion with sometimes dangerous consequences. Colour namer tools have been proposed as a solution, however these are often slow to use and imprecise. To address these shortcomings, we developed three new colour identification techniques (ColourNames, ColourMeters, ColourPopper) using a new colour name dictionary based on the largest colour naming experiment to date. We compared our techniques to colour namers using participants with ICV in desktop and mobile conditions, and found that ColourNames and ColourPopper resulted in ~99% colour identification accuracy (10% higher than the colour namer), ColourMeters and ColourPopper were three times faster, and ColourPopper had lower perceived effort and was ranked significantly higher. With the benefits provided by our new colour identification techniques, people with ICV are one step closer to seeing the world like everyone else.