while I was growing up my dad would
occasionally use the idiom try walking a
mile in someone else's shoes to remind
me and my siblings of why it was
important to be thoughtful and kind to
each other however that saying always
perplexed me
I remember wrestling with wondering how
I could really understand what it was
like to live life from someone else's
perspective I wanted to walk that
proverbial mile but I was too shy to
talk more with people to learn their
stories over the years as I grew out of
my shyness and encountered many new
situations and diverse people I learned
that politely asking a thoughtful
question or two to learn more about
someone else's experience in perspective
helps me appreciate how the experience
of life is truly unique from person to
person in creating this workshop my
dad's old saying crossed my mind once
again what was it really like to
experience some of the barriers that
creating accessible digital learning
content helps alleviate what is the
experience like before accessibility is
taken into consideration for this first
fund a feature I'd like to introduce you
to Justin Justin is a member of Durham
Tech's Information Technology Services
Department and he agreed to sit down
with me and share what it's like to
experience a lack of visual sensitivity
to color good morning Justin so can you
tell us a little bit about what you do
at the college I'm in desktop support so
I fix broken things okay all right so I
know that there's several types or kinds
of color blindness how would you
describe yours I am what's been told to
me as red deficient so I don't see
richness or variance of red how did you
find out that you had this lack of
sensitivity to red I can remember my dad
having a burgundy color car and to me
burgundy just meant Brown yes that's
what I saw it has so I was in my early
20s it first came up and say hey you
probably are some degree in color
as Justin shared the various ways he was
made aware that he could not see the
full richness of red
I wanted to learn more about how this
affected has day-to-day activities it'll
come up in it came up most commonly when
I was a full-time auto mechanic and I
had to identify the red wire auto
manufacturers will use several different
shades of red and so recently they
started labeling cables and wires so
that it'll say this number or to have
this - pattern but to look in a sea of
wires and try to pick out which one is
red which one is brown okay alright what
would you do in that situation just on
the code word I would either ask a
co-worker or find some other means of
identification sometimes I didn't really
want to say I can't figure out which one
this is I would end up going through the
trouble of tracing it all the way back
to its destination to say okay this is
where it is a little extra time involved
there imagine yeah grab me the red box
no grab the red box I asked Justin if he
would be willing to describe the colors
he saw if I showed him a couple of
pictures the cartoonish one number right
hand corner mm-hmm I see that as an
orange almost all of the other apples
are so I like I know that they're red
because I've learned over my wife that
apples are red so I know that that's red
and I can kind of trick myself into
thinking that I see the red the only one
that looks blatantly red to me is that
middle row far right that's the only one
that really looks of the natural apples
that actually looks red to me background
colors I use those a lot too when I'm
trying to determine the colors okay I'll
move it in front of other colors because
different different colors kind of set
it off in my brain and say okay this is
not what you think it is the Apple
Justin was referencing had been
photographed in front of a brown
background it was interesting that the
contrast between those two colors played
an important role in helping Justin know
which color he was seeing
I wondered if this translated to his
experience on the Internet in emails
folks will highlight things in red so if
I just said something like turning your
leaf form by Friday or something like
that but that I'm going to just take one
of these words I'm taking one of those
words and I've changed it to red and so
those are all the same color they're all
the same color and so I've taken the
word Friday and I've changed it to red
and the rest of the text is black so I
don't see it as red but Friday what I do
see it as is a gradient going light to
dark as you go from F to Y MMF is
lighter than Y well I do not see that as
right certain websites when they use
different font colors and backgrounds as
a student when I went to school here
whose Sam almost killed me I'm not okay
when it would say make your background
of your text this color then I would
click the color this Sam is completely
unforgiving just take that there used to
be a number of websites there was one in
particular that I remember just
irritating me so bad because this the
subject was something I wanted to read
about but they used this weird brick
pattern background and I would end up
having to highlight the text that I
wanted to read in order to bring that
contrast lighting is imported Justin's
willingness to share his experiences an
important take away from my talk with
him is that it's important to remember
that what one person sees is not always
the same as what someone else sees in
this first module of fun day you'll
learn how to work with text color and
contrast to ensure all of your students
can read your content before Justin and
I parted ways I asked him if he had any
advice he wanted to share with us to be
more mindful of your background and
foreground color choices especially when
it comes to
- printed text like that some things are
just really hard to read based on color
choices and stuff and I understand from
an artistic standpoint sometimes there's
a direction that you want to go but it
can make it very difficult like in the
case of that one website well now I have
to highlight the text and undo your
artistic design and be able to get
functionality that's probably the one
that that bothers me the most
okay I would you know just just being
generally mindful of because someone
with a more extreme degree than what I
have is probably gonna have a much
harder time with okay all right well
thank you