Addressing Color Blind Awareness in the Classroom

Abstract

On average, one out of every twelve men and one out of every 200 women do not see colors the same as everyone else. And yet engineering technology programs, not to mention industry, to often fail to take these people into account. This article discusses the types of color vision deficiencies (which are often grouped together under the misnomer of color blindness) that exist and some of the tools that will allow those who can see the full color spectrum to view things as if they had a color vision deficiency. Targeted towards educators as a call-to-action, and not intended as an article on how to teach color vision deficiencies to students, the goal of this article is to educate professors so that they can better get their messages across to those students who suffer from color vision deficiencies. Finally, a number of suggestions are offered on how to choose colors such that they do not cause confusion for those that suffer from color vision deficiencies.