Colorblind accessible image search

A system for re-ranking the results of a relevance-ranked image search to account for the accessibility of the images to a colorblind user, comprising:

• a general purpose computing device;
• one or more image databases which are in communication with the computing device;
• and
• a computer program comprising program modules executable by the computing device, wherein the computing device is directed by the program modules of the computer program to,
• input a designation of the type of colorblindness the user suffers from,
• input results of a relevance-ranked image search,
• generate colorblind versions of images discovered in the search, said colorblind versions simulating how the associated images would appear to a person suffering from the designated the type of colorblindness,
• compute a colorblind accessibility quantity for each images of interest in the search results based on the associated colorblind versions of the images, said colorblind accessibility quantity quantifying the degree to which color information is preserved when an image is perceived by a colorblind person viewing the image,
• re-rank the images of interest in the search results based on a combination of the relevance rankings and rankings derived from the colorblind accessibility quantities, and
• provide the re-ranked results to the user.