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‘Seamless Visual Sharing with Colour Blind People’ is one of the five innovative projects to be showcased by The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) when it  participates in the coming Hong Kong Electronics Fair (Autumn Edition) 2016 at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre from 13 to 16 October. ‘Seamless Visual Sharing with Colour Blind People’, is the first system allowing colour blindness, also known as colour vision deficiency (CVD), and normal vision audiences to share the same visual content simultaneously. 

There are approximately 250 million people who suffer from CVD. They can hardly distinguish between some of the colours which affect their daily life. Something as simple as buying fruit can be difficult for them. For example, they are often unable to distinguish the colours of apples and grapes. Recoloring the images can help CVD to better distinguish confusing colours. However, such colour-adjusted content will then appear significantly different to those with normal vision. 

In view of this, Prof. WONG Tien Tsin, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, CUHK, has designed the first system of ‘Seamless Visual Sharing with Colour Blind People’ with binocular vision technology. Through the standard stereoscopic display installed with this system, CVD users wearing stereoscopic glasses can share the same visual content simultaneously with normal vision audiences, and the normal vision audiences are not aware of the change. Meanwhile, Professor Wong and his team are the first to utilise the computer-controlled binocular display systems to tailor the colour discrimination solution to each CVD individual. Furthermore, they also propose a novel calibration method to measure the differences in severity between CVD affected individuals. 

When our left and right eyes are fed with different visual content, our brain can unconsciously fuse the different visual content from both eyes into a single percept. Such a single percept is different from the linear blending of two views. Utilising this human visual behaviour, Professor Wong has designed this ‘Seamless Visual Sharing with Colour Blind People’ system, which synthesises a pair of images and can be presented binocularly through the stereoscopic display. The system maximises the colour distinguishability of the image pair so that CVD audiences wearing stereoscopic glasses are able to distinguish the originally indistinguishable colours. At the same time, normal vision audiences viewing the image from stereoscopic display directly (without stereoscopic glasses) will not be aware of any colour difference from the original image. 

Professor Wong said, ‘This technique can be applied to a wide variety of 3D display devices. With the price of these 3D display devices being more affordable nowadays (many families own 3D TV-set, and mobile phones, tablets, and so on), it becomes more practical for colour blind people to share the same images / videos with normal vision people via this new technology.’ 

Mr. HAN Chu, a PhD student who is suffering from CVD, tried this novel technology and said, ‘I never thought that I would be able to see the colour differences by wearing normal stereoscopic glasses. Now, I can easily distinguish competing teams wearing uniforms of confusing colours, so enhancing my viewing pleasure.’ 

To know more about the aforementioned technology and other recent technological projects, please visit the booth of CUHK at the Hong Kong Electronics Fair (Autumn Edition). 

Hong Kong Electronics Fair (Autumn Edition)
Date: 13-16 October 2016
Time: 9:30am – 6:30pm (It will be closed at 5:00pm on 16 October)
Venue: Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre Hall 1A Concourse (CUHK Booth No.: 1CON-060).