This app aims at helping color blind people distinguish color combinations that they would usually struggle with. Tom Overton, Microsoft software Engineer who is also colorblind says, “Anything with red or green messes me up, It’s not so terrible, but it does affect you. For instance, fall leaves don’t look any different for me than other leaves. They look like they always do. It takes a lot of color out of my life – metaphorically, that is.” Color Binoculars is currently available for iOS and is part of the Microsoft Garage apps. The apps help colorblind people differentiate the color by making the reds brighter and the greens darker so that the difference is more pronounced. Furthermore, difficult color combinations like the red and green are replaced with more easily distinguishable combinations like Pink and Green. The makers of this app claim that one can see the world zoomed in and in a completely different way. And all of this is done without saving the image and relying on post-production, the real-time feature is something of prime importance here. All one needs to do is point their smartphone camera app at the objects and toggle the preferred color combination. Color Blindness is something that is caused by the inability to distinguish between wavelengths of light so the app uses built-in filters and the iPhone’s camera in order to differentiate between the colors. Using this app you would be able to pick out flowers, choose matching clothes and also tell the difference between colored alerts onscreen.
