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