2008-04-19 18:58:09

Hi,
This is for all of you that have gone blind later in life (let's say 20s or 30s or even 40s). Can you describe colors from a blindness perspective? See, I have been blind since birth and have never seen anything in my life. Thanks.

skype name: techluver
Feel free to add me.

2008-04-19 20:20:47 (edited by cx2 2008-04-19 20:23:46)

Having lost my sight in mid to later teens I have memory of sight, but unfortunately I'm not really sure words can convey the concept. Imagine trying to describe the sound of a cat purring to someone who is deaf and has never heard anything before.

I know this isn't what you wanted and I'm sorry, it is the only answer I have to give.

Thinking more though I can say that the way colours are seen is sort of like how texture is when you touch something. When you see something the colour is just there, in the same way that texture is just there. The difference is you can take in the colour of an entire object at once, or even multiple objects. Being able to sense a large area all at once and with accuracy is the thing that to me really defines sight from touch or sound, which are either limited in the area you can perceive or lack accuracy and detail respectively.

cx2
-----
To live by honour and to honour life, these are our greatest strengths and our best hopes.

2008-04-19 23:43:03

I know of someone that read a poem to me that related some of the the colors in turms of tuch or sound, but it doesn't get the point across. I know how it is, being blind from berth. We can't explain it better then someone explaining sight or color. All I can say it is that it just is. I can't see color so I can't tell you about it. Can we describe the sound of birds to someone who can't hear. I think the major problem is do to the fact that Those who can see can't relate colors in turms to give us a full idea of how it is. Try to relate feel sound and smell to someone who might not have those sences, and try not to say something like the sky is blue and the sun is yellow. For, what is blue and yellow?

All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost. From the ashes a fire shall be woken, A light from the shadows shall spring; Renewed shall be blade that was broken, The crownless again shall be king.
DropBox Referral

2008-04-20 07:22:49

I can't even see light, and I've asked many people, and my conclusion is that it's just unexplainable. I'd gladly be sighted for one day, just to get an idea of what color really is.

2008-04-20 08:35:07

Being blind since birth, it's possible that I'm out on a limb here, but I've analyzed this from a lot of different angles, philosophically speaking, and what it seems to me is this:
Colour is to vision what pitch is to sound. That is: every single sound has a pitch, just as every single visible object or area has colour. Just as colour defines an object visually (either by contrast or by preference), so sound is highlighted by pitch (low or high). Colour is a litle broader than pitch is, technically, but since there is different timbre and volume of sound (and of course, no different timbre or volume of sight) it tends to balance out a little. All this having been said, I believe that to try and explain colour to a person who has never had sight is like trying to describe E flat to a person who is deaf or utterly stone tone-deaf. You can get scientific, but you won't capture the essence of the thing from a layman's perspective. No words can do it justice, and  when describing either pitch or colour, our poetic or difficulty-phrased renderings do the things little justice, I'm afraid. Having perfect pitch and having dealt with tone-deaf individuals, I know...trust me.

And, not to step on toes here, but I really don't give much of a rip about colour and the sighted world in general. Yes, it's beyond my capacity to understand..but I don't lose any sleep over it. I've been blind twenty-four years, almost six months into my twenty-fifth year, and I'm happy with my lot; to understand more would be nice, but to wish it would be purely an intellectual or epistemological pursuit.

I -know this isn't what the topic creator was seeking when they posted, but I couldn't resist. Heh.

Check out my Manamon text walkthrough at the following link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z8ls3rc3f4mkb … n.txt?dl=1

2008-04-20 10:29:30 (edited by cx2 2008-04-20 10:30:20)

Well as I said the big thing that seperates vision, and thus colour, from sound is the sheer level of detail. This might be sort of quirky, but imagine if you could feel the texture of an entire wall all at once say. That is a wall complete with a window, curtains, and so on. It still doesn't do it justice, but it is the best I can do. Having the level of detail you can get with touch combined with the range and breadth of perception of sound, really this is the reason most non visually impaired people rely on their vision so heavily. The sheer amount of information it returns just can't be matched by any other sense.

cx2
-----
To live by honour and to honour life, these are our greatest strengths and our best hopes.

2008-04-20 15:53:04

Hmmm interesting, ---- I was at a conference on qualea and sense perception just the other week.

Cx2, I believe you are slightly confusing colour sensation with object identification there, which are two completely different concepts.

remember that object identification is indirect, ie, it happens at a completely sub-conscious level. just as you can here the sound of the sea and instantly know what it is without any analysis, a fully sited person could (as presumably you did before you lost your site Cx2), instantly identify objects, ie, that is a window, without any conscious thought.

with the level of vision I have, I can see colours, but that sort of easy object identification in site has always been well and truly beyond me, I always have to use logic based on context, and often on other sense data to identify something eg: right now I'm in my living room. I know that to my left is my mantlepiece. Looking left, I can identify a dark coloured object, which I know from context must be my mantlepiece, however where I in a different setting, I couldn't identify the same shape half as easily.

I'm sure a lot of people are familiar with this sort of logic from using sound or smell or touch.

then, there are orther sense perceptions associated with site, eg, depth perception, which are not related to colour at all, sinse people who are colour blind can stil functionally have those sorts of perceptions.

To get at the difference I'm trying to identify here, think of a piece of music. imagine the structure of the piece, the way what has gone first defigns what goes on afterwards, the way various rythms and pieces of melody fit together (I was reading a paper on perception of music just recently, which had this sort of model). Now compare your perception of the hole musical structure and expression to a basic perception of sound. This is the difference betwene a basic perception of colour, and an entire perception of coloured objects, depth perception and landscape.

Is it possible to tell you about the complete and total perception of colour? no, probably not, ---- specifically not for me sinse that's something I don't have, sinse in site terms I'm like someone trying to listen to a full orchestral synphany who can only here the notes middle C to the G above. But the basic perception of colour? Well there is evidence that some people blind from birth have actually had this perception due to synaesthesia, in fact being colour synaesthesic myself, I can understand how this might be the case, but unfortunately we don't really have the linguistic tools to deal with or articulate those sorts of concepts, because we can only ever refer to colour perception, ---- or indeed any other sensary perception as being tied to a specific object, rather than free floating perception as in synaesthesia.

Oh heck, ---- I just went into academic philosopher mode there for a second. For more information on synaesthesia, see the wikipedia artical on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia

I'm synaesthesic myself, which is indeed fun, in fact for me, audio games actually have graphics, lol, so it is possible for me to have colour perceptions without site actually being involved, and there is evidence that there have been synaesthesics blind from birth, who had perceptions of colour through other senses, which is interesting. In fact, I remember from the time when I lost all my site before I recovered some, that I did in fact stil have perceptions of colour synaesthesically, through other senses, but how to explain these perceptions to a non-synaesthete is something I'll have to go away and think about.

appologies for the wrant, as I said, these are questions I've been considdering a lot lately.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2008-04-20 16:06:04

Not quite, I was talking about the ability to identify colours on a large number of objects in a wide area of perception. I mean it as in if colour is to vision as texture is to touch, then the fully sighted can perceive the colour of an entire wall complete with everything on or around that wall all at once complete with colour... sort of like having a really big hand, or a sixth sense that lets you somehow psychically sense the texture in a large area simeltaneously.

The mention of multiple objects was simply to illustrate, so to speak, how much sight can encompass all at once. I'm sorry if this confused you.

cx2
-----
To live by honour and to honour life, these are our greatest strengths and our best hopes.

2008-04-20 17:49:52

I think I understand what you're saying, CX2, and where touch is concerned I agree with you. There are some things you can discern by touch that you probably can't by sight, but vision does encompass a great deal all at once.
I still hold to what I said about one's ears though. While I'm sure there are things about the world that your eyes will tell you that your ears don't, there are many things your ears can tell you that your eyes don't. That's why I compared colour to pitch, rather than colour to texture.

Check out my Manamon text walkthrough at the following link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z8ls3rc3f4mkb … n.txt?dl=1

2008-04-20 18:20:18

There is also light. Does lighting play a part of seeing colors? I don't have light perseption and I was wondering if those who are lucky enough to have enough sight to see color depend alot on light to see color. LOL. Light is another thing that just is.

All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost. From the ashes a fire shall be woken, A light from the shadows shall spring; Renewed shall be blade that was broken, The crownless again shall be king.
DropBox Referral

2008-04-20 19:41:10

Well if it is dark enough the human eye switches to black and white I believe. The "rods" in the eye simply detect the level of light and give this black and white vision. The "cones" that detect colours require more light to function.

Oh and the reason I compared colour to texture is partly because everything has it. Any object or surface has colour just as it has texture, that was my thinking there. It is obviously very hard to explain.

cx2
-----
To live by honour and to honour life, these are our greatest strengths and our best hopes.

2008-04-20 20:13:34

Ah Cx2, that makes sense, ut given the land scape view of music, I think perhaps it's possible, ---- with training, to perceive a reasonable number of sound experiences at one time, it's just that other than in music this isn't generally possible in real life, sinse vision is such a heavily used sense. I'm reminded of the next gen episode where you see Gordi laforge's orgmented vision, which has so much information it makes it almost impossible for someone to normally determine what is being seen, but gordi says he can pick out the information he wants in a similar fashion to a practiced person can pick out a single sound in a noisey room.

While I'd certainly agree a lot of information comes through vision, ---- for me I'd say even though i have limited vision I probably do %50 of things visually and the other %50 with other senses, while a sited person does about %85 with vision and only about %15 with other senses, I stil say this is more a matter of training, social construction and habituation. I remember for example having a raging arguement in aesthetics with the tutor who claimed that the sense of smell couldn't be representative of an object the way site or hereing could. I regularly use my sense of smell a lot, ---- for instance in mobility, and I'm fairly certain that a bushman from Africa who needs very keen senses in order to hunt and stay alive (including smell), would totally agree with me.

Afterall, if instead of street signs continuous looped recordings of information were used to convey general information, eg, platform numbers and locations in stations, everyone would have to use their hereing more. We can of course imagine a society, like the mole's of duncton wood, or the kingdom of the blind in the h.g. Wells' story living with litle or no vision (in the duncton series, mole braille is the standard form of writing, and sound and echoes are incredibly important).

of course, there are many things which would be impossible without vision, and there's no getting away from that fact, ---- for example knowing what colour a person's hair is without using a light pen or similar, but a lot of other things can be done, ---- though often with more effort (as I'm arguing in my Phd thesis on disability).

I will admit though, i wouldn't be without my vision, even in a fully adapted society where everything was just as possible without it, sinse it does lend experiences to things which i enjoy and would rather not be without.

Not to say that jayde or anyone else here is wrong on this point at all, just a personal opinion from experience. Imagine for example losing your sense of taste. yes, you could live perfectly happily without it, yes, there would stil be a lot of fun things you could do, ---- but something would stil be missing from your experiences.

About basic experience Cw, it would work roughly like this. Imagine that your constantly hereing a complex array of sounds, ---- eg, a very complicated piece of music, that is similar to site. the timbre of each instrument, --- eg, the quality of the sound irrespective of pitch (the difference betwene the sound of a horn and a guittar, even played at the same volume and pitch), is similar to colour, the pitch of each instrument would be similar to the brightness of the colour, and the volume of the music in general would correspond to the general light.

there would therefore be some timbre's of instrument you'd miss at lower volume, the same way you can't see some colours in reduced lighting conditions, while some pitches are easier to here than others, the brightness of some coloursfor example making them easier to distinguis.

Of course, being a colour/tactile synaesthete, this is probably an easy thing for me to defign and understand when put like this, sinse whenever I here music (or anything else)I do have an experience of colour (along with tactile sensation), but I'm not sure how much sense it makes to anyone else, sinse explaining synaesthesia to anyone who doesn't have it is generally a weerd process, ---- my mum and eye for example have huge incomprehensible arguements abhout the colour and temperature of certain days of the week, which nobody else gets, ;D.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2008-04-20 20:28:05

A most interesting take, and I can understand the music comparison even if I'm not at all trained in such things.

As to how much we do through sight or other senses I simply mean as you say things can be a little easier through sight, and then why focus on more than one sense when sight can deliver almost everything a sighted person needs? I can for example often tell if a computer in a crowded computer room is on or not by listening carefully, or by placing my hand on the case and feeling for the tell tale vibration from the fans. This works to varying degrees with different computers. However why go to that extent when a sighted person can simply look at the lights on the front? Or more often look at the monitor, but sometimes someone has turned the monitor off and this naturally leads less proficient people to assume the computer's broken. To me the average person relies on their sight purely for ease, and is lazy about their other senses in a lot of ways. Some senses too might even lean more to the subconscious, imagine someone turning on hearing a sound and looking to see what it is. They might not even think about why they turned, but the reason was there just not high enough to register.

cx2
-----
To live by honour and to honour life, these are our greatest strengths and our best hopes.

2008-04-20 22:22:14

I take the point Cx2, and I don't disagree about the amount of information conveyed through site, but while as I said, I think there are many things which are entirely dependent upon site, and which even in some sort of utopian society where all information was available in multi-sensory form would be impossible to appreciate without use of site, there is also a lot of social construction and encouragement as well, ---- and in modern society, ---- particularly a society which has had the ability to reproduce immages quickly for almost 120 years (photographs, films etc), we've become lazy about the information content other sense, eg, putting an lights on computers to show that they are working, rather than expecting people to rely upon their senses of hearing or touch for that information, ---- it's interesting that tv's don't come with some sort of vibrating button to tell you that they are working.

though interestingly enough one paper at the conference was on so called "I pod culture" and the idea of people taking control of their own sound environments, ---- wearing I pods on the train and having control over what music or audio they play etc.

Of course, as with most philosophical questions, i'd say that going heavily down one side or the other is a bad idea. Saying (as indeed quite a surprising number of people do), that everything is purely society, ---- even the idea that people lacking the ability to see, here, move freely etc are disabled is just a prejudice the same way racism or sexism is, and it's all society's fault, or saying: "well if your disabled, your disabled and there's an end to it, you just can't! do thing x because it requires site or whatever" (as some people have said to me), are both obviously fairly bad notions.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2008-04-20 22:44:49

I remember reading an artikel on some of the problems a blind person might have wile useing the net and then reading some of the comments. I could tell that one of the ones that posted a comment didn't understand about blindness. I guess they don't understand that we may buy our tech, but sites do need to be accessible. don't get me started. there is the IPod that could easerly be addapted. Of corse on the web, colors could mean so many different things on differant sites.

All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost. From the ashes a fire shall be woken, A light from the shadows shall spring; Renewed shall be blade that was broken, The crownless again shall be king.
DropBox Referral

2008-04-21 00:34:02

Heh...if I'd had sight once, I'd probably not be so blithe about not having it now, but since I dont' know what I'm missing, to ask me to change in a huge way would be rather strange, and I'm happy how I am. That's what I was getting at earlier when I said that I didn't give much of a rip about the fully sight-oriented world.

As for people using/depending on sight? I dunno. Me personally, I admit that the eyes are superb instruments of sensory recognition, but I think that society and whatnot has put more of a focus on sight than anything else. I, too, can navigate areas by smell, and just about everything tangible either creates an echo (sound, partial touch in a way) and/or an air disturbance (touch)...remember, not all touch is done with the hands or extremities, on the whole. I definitely agree that people in Africea, the Bushmen you mentioned, would definitely need their other senses to be more finely-tuned than most. It is my somewhat biased opinion that in today's society, the majority of sighted people are only as dependent as they are due to the way everything is designed, with the eye in mind. I must admit, however, that I'm very pleased with my current GF, who is sighted, uses her eyes (drives, reads, etc), yet tends to pick up on (to some extent, at least) just about everything I do...so she's not using her sight so much as to neglect her other senses. This pleases me greatly any time I see it; it's sort of disheartening to hear a person go on about how bright the sun is, or how pretty the trees are, only to forget the caress of the warming spring breeze, the faint scent of ripening blossoms and the lesser but still appealing smell of wet earth just after a rain.

I know about synesthesia, don't believe I possess that particular gift, but I at least sort of understand it. I do often associate sounds with colours (colours insofar as I understand them, by comparisons), and can  sometimes think of words or feelings, or even moods, in context of taste. It's odd.

Check out my Manamon text walkthrough at the following link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z8ls3rc3f4mkb … n.txt?dl=1

2008-04-21 01:57:29

Hmmm, Jayde, according to one studdy I looked at when I was researching the subject, one in ten people are synaesthesic to some extent, ---- and taste synaesthesia is certainly possible.

As I said above, I'd agree with you to some extent, ---- though at the same time I wouldn't want to go too far down the "it's all a social bias" route, though i certainly think there is a lot of that sort of thing as I said. I'm also reminded of one snide comment of my mum's which she told me about. At a recent course for her work, there was a really long lecture on the necessity of non-verbal communication, eye contact, facial expression etc. Like me, though my mum has a certain amount of site, she can't get much of that sort of thing at all. When it came to question time, she stood up and inicently asked why, if this non-verbal, face to face communication was so dam important, organizations like the samaritans and child line could be so successful over the phone. there was apparently quite a lot of stunned silence, ---- rofl!

I also fully agree with you on multi-sense perception being a very good thing, in fact it's something all of my very close friends who are fully endowed in the eyeball department do very well, ---- I've been known to spend afternoons sitting around with one friend just playing around with his mixer and a mike for the hell of it, in fact one advantage of being a person with abnormally low levels of eyeballs I think, is that I get to appreciate a lot of things in a multi-sensary way (though this is also a characteristic of synaesthetes).

One interesting conversation I had with the chap about second life research involved the developement of uis that took advantage of multiple senses. in fact, i know at the moment there is a plastic in developement which can contract when an electric current passes through it, and cease contracting when not electrified. Not only would this mean incredibly cheap, and very detailed braille displays, but also the potential for fully tactile displays which changed according to preset programs commands. imagine for example, a game with a fully intigrated tactile map, or the ability to read large amounts of screen layout information like a braille page of text.

there's some intteresting experimental work being done on haptic technology and intefaces at the moment, and I could see an information revolution doing a lot to change social atitudes.

Btw Jayde, both from your use of air vibration perception and echoes, and what you said in the chess thread, it sounds like you have bloody good space perception and mental mapping skills. I actually have a physiological disability in this area caused at birth, ---- in fact I find understanding spaces and distances a dam difficult affair (one reason why i'm terrible at grid based games like solitare, and probably what makes me such an awful lone wolf player).

I often walk into things which I've either seen, or felt the first time symply because my spacial judgement is so awful, and if I go upstairs, I can never work out which way I'm facing relative to where I was downstairs. all my mobility involves remembering strings of land marks, --- some visual, some tactile, some auditory and some scent, --- for example, walk until i reach the tactile paving, cross road and turn left until i get to the coffee shop etc), , but if you asked me actually where I've gone in relation from A to B I genuinely couldn't tell you.

I've read several intreaguing articals which suggest that our five sense model is actually very limited. Other senses could include pain, bodily awareness, feelings of temperature (which is obviously different from tactile sensation), and of course space and time. then of course there are things like awareness of others feelings, ambience etc which raise their own set of issues.

Just an interesting idea I thought. As you can tell, this is a topic I've worked on (and One I'm stil working on), and one I'm really interested in.

Cw, please explain what you mean by different colour on different websites meaning different things. If you mean text highlighting or writing links in another colour, ---- your screen reader can tell you that information already, if you mean background/forground colour, --- again your screen reader can tell you (though your quite okay brousing without it). If you mean immages, ---- then it's not really a question of colour, just one of information, and the webmaster's badness in not providing that information with text lables or alt tags.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2008-04-21 02:40:16

Dark, the website
www.airaim.com
uses different colored stars to show the statis of your buddies on AIM and Jaws doesn't say anything, but it's not a big problem in my opinion

Connor

2008-04-21 08:20:10

Hmmm, I do find it surprising that jaws doesn't have a way of showing colour information about specific characters if they are text rather than graphics, Hal doesn't speak it by default (I could set it too but that would be most annoying), but if I stick the Vf over a character and hit the additional information key a couple of times (numberpad four in default keyset), it'll tell me the font, size and colour. I'd be surprised if Jaws doesn't have something similar.

You could always alternatively ask whoever is in charge of the site to fix it the same way skype works, where the status, --- ofline, unavailable etc is given out in text, which from a programming point of view would probably be no more difficult than displaying different coloured stars, sinse it just involves displaying a different sort of text character for the same information.

If the stars are in fact immage graphics and not the star text character (the one you get with shift and 8), then things might be a litle more complicated, but stil as I said elsewhere, the immages should be tagged for accesibility reasons.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2008-04-21 12:21:23

Insert plus 5, the 5 being the one on the number row not the numpad. You might have to use insert escape to refresh the virtual cursor's information to get an up to date output. This may in some cases however return the numeric RGB codes when it doesn't conform to one of the recognised colours.

cx2
-----
To live by honour and to honour life, these are our greatest strengths and our best hopes.

2008-04-21 15:58:59 (edited by CJ 2008-04-21 15:59:43)

okay thanks I will contact the developer of that websitt then

Connor

2008-04-21 16:32:35

Try the insert plus 5 I suggested first, it should say something like "black on white". The first is obviously the text colour, the second the background. It works with other things too, not just the internet. Sadly images won't work with this though, so if Jaws says something like "graphic *" you may have a problem.

cx2
-----
To live by honour and to honour life, these are our greatest strengths and our best hopes.

2008-04-21 16:35:57

I was kind of meaning bo. some devilapers use grafics wile others just change colors of the text. Take a look at LOGD. The area showing your helth is green when you are ok, yellow when you need to watch out, and red when you are in danger of diing. For example, 35/35 would be green, 20/35 would be yellow, and 5/35 would be red. I would not have known thiif idn't look threw the help thing. As for grafics, try to set up your own yahoo account. Colors may play a major part here, but why would site owners not think about this when it comes to the VI?

All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost. From the ashes a fire shall be woken, A light from the shadows shall spring; Renewed shall be blade that was broken, The crownless again shall be king.
DropBox Referral

2008-04-21 17:51:31

They wouldn't think about it because many people don't even realise blind people can use computers, and even if they do they don't necessarily think they would be interested in *their* site. Not really logical, but it is often enough how the human mind works. To them they are often as likely to think of us as they are martians, unless of course they know people personally or receive enquiries from people who are visually impaired.

cx2
-----
To live by honour and to honour life, these are our greatest strengths and our best hopes.

2008-04-22 00:01:42

Indeed. In the Logd case though, I don't think the lack of colour here is really an issue sinse the information is available via a screen reader. Remember, that if a sited person was scanning the print visually, they might at first miss the actual numbers, but pick up on the colour, obviously examining the information audibly changes this fact completely, ---- ihom some sort of accessible version of the message eg text saying: 35-35, green, 20-35 yellow, would be rather annoying with a screen reader and wouldn't exactly lend much to the game, or tell you anything really new.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)