Microsoft Launches Color Binoculars App for iOS to Assist the Colour-Blind

Microsoft has introduced an iOS app specifically for users with colour blindness. The new Color Binoculars app is claimed to work for all three types of colour blindness by correcting the brightness, darkness, and other levels of the visual on screen.

It's only launched for iPhone users for now, and is available as a free download. Sadly, it's not available in the Indian App Store, and can only be accessed by US users for now. It's 9.4MB in size and is compatible with iOS 9.0 and above on iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

As the name suggests, the app helps colour-blind individuals distinguish colours using the iPhone camera. The app automatically adjusts the colours that you see to replace difficult colour combinations, like red and green, with more easily distinguishable combinations, like pink and green. This enables the colour-blind user to see visuals in the same way as a normal user.

Color Binoculars app supports all three common forms of colour blindness - protanomaly which reduces red light sensitivity, deuteranomaly which reduces green light sensitivity, and tritanomaly that reduces blue light sensitivity.

This nifty new app is made by Microsoft's Garage Team - a workforce within the Redmond-based organisation focused on making products completely different from the company's core business portfolio. App maker Tom Overton said in a blog post, "It's an app that helps colour-blind people distinguish colour combinations that they would normally have trouble telling apart. For example, since I have difficulty distinguishing between red and green, our app makes reds brighter and greens darker so that the difference is more obvious. It replaces difficult colour combinations, like red and green, with more easily distinguishable combinations, like pink and green."

The interface is simple, and is essentially just a camera app with three modes to choose from at the bottom. There's a Red/Green mode, Green/Red mode, and Blue/Yellow mode. There's a toggle switch at the bottom to switch correction on/off to notice the difference Color Binoculars makes for its users.