How to Turn on Color Blind Mode in Android 5.0

How-to
By Sam Rutherford
published

If you're like one of the millions of color deficient tech users, here's how to turn on the color blind modes in Android 5.0.

There are three types of color blindness, which encompasses the inability to perceive color differences. Approximately 8 percent of men and 0.4 percent of women of Northern European decent suffer from color blindness or some sort of color deficiency. That means in the U.S. alone, around 12 million people don’t see the same shades. To help address this problem, Google added a color correction feature to Android 5.0 Lollipop to help people with color blindness better use their mobile devices. Here’s how to enable those settings.

MORE: Android 5 Lollipop: A Guide to the Best New Features

1. Open up the Settings menu.

2. Tap System > Accessibility.


3. Tap the Color correction option.

4. Select from one of three color blind modes. 

Deuteranomaly (red-green) is the most common type of color blindness, and is characterized by a decreased sensitivity to green light. Protanomaly (red-green) is a reduced sensitivity to red light. Tritanomaly (blue-yellow) is extremely rare, and is cased by an inability to perceive blue light.

5. Tap the slider in the top right corner of the screen to activate this feature.


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Sam Rutherford is a staff writer at Tom’s Guide. Follow him @SamRutherford on Twitter, and Tom’s Guide on Twitter, Facebook and Google+.

Sam Rutherford

Sam is a Senior Writer at Engadget and previously worked at Gizmodo as a Senior Reporter. Before that, he worked at Tom's Guide and Laptop Mag as a Staff Writer and Senior Product Review Analyst, overseeing benchmarks and testing for countless product reviews. He was also an archery instructor and a penguin trainer too (really).