CHAPTER I- THE IDENTIFICATION OF COLORS THROUGH GEOMETRIC SHAPES AND TEXTURES BY PEOPLE WITH COLOR BLINDNESS IN GARMENTS: A PRODUCT PROPOSAL                                                                                                                                                                                                            
Ítalo José de Medeiros Dantas 
Alice Jennifer de Santana
Rafaela Patrícia de Araújo
Thalita Mikaela de Oliveira
Lívia Juliana Silva Solino

                                                                               
Cite this chapter
APA

Dantas, I.J.M.,.Santana, A.J., Araújo, R.P., Oliveira, T. M., Solino, L.J.S. (2023). Chapter I The Identification of  Colors Through Geometric Shapes and Textures by People with Color Blindness in Garments: A Product Proposal. In  F. E. Atilo Batista (Ed.), Academic Research & Reviews in Art, Design, Architecture and Fashion Breaking Creative Boundaries (pp. 10-23). Ankara, Türkiye: Global Academy Publishing House. https://dx.doi.org/10.59740/academy.56

Introduction

Over time, clothing has performed essential functions related to protecting and beautifying the human body (Treptow, 2013); nowadays, clothing has performed several other increasingly essential purposes, such as developing more inclusive relationships in user-product interaction (Varnier et al., 2019). Through clothing, it is possible to express desires, feelings, values, identities, and issues related to diversity (Barnard, 2013; Tajuddin, 2018), thus becoming an essential tool for social inclusion (McQuilten, 2017; Busch, 2018). In addition to providing facilities for people with disabilities, inclusive fashion introduces a new concept of comfort to this sector, combined with beauty and style, attributes characteristic of fashion used by people without disabilities (Varnier et al., 2019).

Clothing items developed especially for people with disabilities usually have details that make it easier to put on, thus making it possible for the owner of the clothing to use it, giving these people autonomy (Chang et al., 2009; Kabel, Dimka, and McBee-Black, 2017; Poonia, and Pink, 2020). Clothes produced from the perspective of Inclusive Fashion give an aspect of insertion and humanization to the fashion sector (Gonçalves, 2013). Even though inclusive thinking in design has been growing over the years, much is missing when talking about the inclusion of visually impaired people, especially colorblind people, in the overall fashion experience (Tian and Yuan, 2010; Tanuwidjaja et al., 2014; Silva, 2023). In this context, we found a gap when thinking about clothing geared towards people with color blindness.

Dyschromatopsia, known as “color blindness,” is related to difficulty identifying and differentiating color characteristics (Lanthony, 2018). John Dalton, an English physicist and chemist, discovered that this condition can be caused by hereditary and congenital factors or by some diseases, injuries, and even medications (Lanthony, 2018). According to Bailey (2010), it is estimated that, worldwide, at least 8% of men and 0.4% of women have color blindness. In some way, people affected by this dysfunction may encounter certain obstacles in carrying out daily tasks and professional performance throughout their lives, considering that these interpretations are inferred from a color-based worldview misshapen.

In many countries, such as Brazil, the discussion about inclusion and accessibility perspectives for the colorblind population is still quite vague. Furthermore, the lack of information on the subject, negligence on the part of authorities and professionals, the absence or delay of medical diagnosis, and even the stigma associated with this difficulty in perceiving colors – which is often seen as “nonsense” or “freshness” – are some reasons that possibly lead to this scenario.

This reality becomes an obstacle in fashion consumption, as color is an element of visual language that is quite recurrent in human activity, serving, therefore, to name, indicate, and reference clothes, toys, and products, among other objects (Farina et al., 2006; Barros, 2006). Moreover, color is a resource that constitutes a code belonging to the communication process and shared by a culture. Often, one of the alternatives chosen is for the message to reach the receiver and, consequently, for communication to occur. However, if the recipient does not share the exact references belonging to the sender’s sociocultural repertoire or does not have specific conditions to understand the type of code used, understanding becomes impaired since the process concerns a mutual action.

Therefore, this research aims to produce clothing items containing geometric shapes that help people with trichromatic color blindness identify specific colors.