Did I win??
I'm color blind. That doesn't mean that I see in black in white (yes, I have had people ask me that), but I do have trouble distinguishing between shades of certain colors, especially green and red. Normally, this doesn't present too many problems for me, except that I can't be a fighter pilot nor would it be wise for me to try to earn a living defusing bombs. Since I've always been color blind, I've learned to adapt quite well. Every now and then though, I do encounter a situation where I'm up the creek until a color-endowed visionary can come to my rescue. Yesterday I had such an event.
I needed a couple of new light bulbs for some recessed lights in my hallway. At the Home Depot I picked up a couple of GE Reveal 65 watt R30 light bulbs. As I was doing the self-checkout routine, I noticed that on the package was an instant 75 cents off coupon. I peeled it off and beneath the coupon was a super secret decoder tool to use on http://www.geswitchandwin.com. It said to visit the site, register and then use the super secret decoder to see a special code on their website that would reveal whether I'd won a fantastic prize. Maybe my own private island, or a spectacular beach house on Grand Cayman??
I dashed home, super secret decoder in hand, anxious to see what marvelous fortune awaited me. I promptly opened my dependable IBM ThinkPad and hastily typed in the URL. I dutifully punched in all of my personal information so that GE could add me to their massive junk mail machine. I patiently waited for the site to process my information and then, just like in the movies, the magical super secret graphic appeared on my screen. I whipped out the super secret decoder and held it over the super secret graphic and guess what I saw?
NOTHING!
How could this be? I was feeling lucky, there was magic in the air. Surely I had won something fantastic. Then I had a light bulb moment (ha, good pun). My decoder had to be defective. Fortunately, I had bought two light bulbs (hah, I'm so smart!). So I snagged my other super secret decoder and held it up to the screen. Wallah, this time guess what I saw?
NOTHING!
Ok, time to end the story. I finally figured out that the problem was that someone with red/green color blindness cannot see the super secret code in the super secret graphic even with the super secret decoder. Now, as someone who has helped to develop scores of successful, user-friendly websites, I know that it is important to understand your audience and how they will use your website. Part of understanding your audience is identifying any characteristics or situations that may prevent the audience from using critical parts of your website. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like the designers on this GE site analyzed their audience and identified that color blind users (which there are probably more than a few) would not be able to use this key part of the website. Or, perhaps they did identify it and just didn't care. :)
So, can someone tell me if I need to pack my bags and buy a one way ticket to Grand Cayman?