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New mobile app helps the colour-blind enjoy colours

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Prague, March 21 (CTK) – Young Czech expert Tomas Jelinek has developed a mobile application that enables colour-blind people to enjoy the world in its full colour diversity, an invention that has spread both at home and abroad in the past three months, daily Pravo wrote on Wednesday.

Jelinek, a Brno Technical University graduate, originally developed the application for his friends, the paper writes, adding that one in hundred women and one in ten men suffer from colour-blindness, a handicap they tend to be ashamed of and conceal.

While playing a board game with his friends, Tomas noticed that some have problem to distinguish pieces of different colours. Thanks to Jelinek’s NowYouSee app, their perception of the world has considerably changed, Pravo writes.

“The user is capable of distinguishing things based on their colours…The application can also be used by visitors in galleries. The colour-blind can finally see the pictures in their full beauty,” Jelinek is quoted as saying.

One of the application’s users is an electrician who has problem to distinguish coloured wires from each other and previously had to permanently ask his colleagues to find out a wire’s colour, Pravo writes.

The invention can help shopping people choose the right apples, play board games and assess works of arts appropriately, for example.

Jelinek has received letters of thanks from many of the application users, including from the USA, Mexico and India.

A basic version of NowYouSee is available for mobile phone loading for free. One can undergo a colour-blindness test on www.testbarvosleposti.cz. The application recognises how profound the users’ sight defect is and advises them which version to choose, Pravo writes.

The picture, recorded by the mobile phone’s camera, is sharpened and modified by the application to make the colour difference evident. Furthermore, the application describes things according to their colours, the paper writes.

Its basic version helps distinguish ten main colours. An extended version, which costs 40 crowns, can cope with as many as 150 colours.

The application is available in Czech and English versions, and it is being translated into German, Spanish and Japanese.

“The main effect is that the application improves the lives of the colour-blind, who experience far fewer embarrassing moments [with it],” Jelinek told Pravo.

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