W0110
Molecular Graphics Color Management for the Colorblind.
Herbert J. Bernstein1 and Frances C. Bernstein2,
1Dept. of Mathematics and Computer Science, Dowling College, Oakdale,
NY 11769, USA, 2Bernstein + Sons, Bellport, NY 11713, USA.
We investigate changes in the management of colors in
molecular graphics to facilitate access by colorblind users. Color is
increasingly important in scientific discourse. Unfortunately, not all color
presentations are effective. Some fail because the color overwhelms the content
of the presentation, and some fail because members of the audience cannot see
the details of what is being presented. About 1/12th of the adult
male population has difficulty distinguishing some range of colors. They are
"colorblind". As Tufte says, we are well advised to select colors for molecular
graphics so that "colors ... are chosen so that color-deficient and color-blind
(5 to 10 percent of viewers) can make sense of the graphic..." We explore
revised color maps and mappings from color to texture to make molecular graphics
more accessible to colorblind users.
Interacting with color images of molecules on a screen is
fundamental to the study of biological macromolecules and small molecules.
Comprehending images of molecules is essential to understanding the scientific
content of many papers. Many of our colleagues and students have difficulty with
these images because of varying degrees of colorblindness. We can and should
improve the situation.
There is no single simple answer to making Molecular Graphics
more accessible to colorblind people. Adopting color schemes that avoid use of
red to distinguish features will help for protanomalous and protanopic people,
but will not help for deutanomalous or deutanopic people. To some extent,
solutions need to be tailored to individual vision defects, but work also needs
to be done to revise various "standard" color schemes to make them more
generally useable. Using RasMol as a testbed, we demonstrate such modifications
to the CPK and Shapely color schemes