
Color blind gamer (2008) - Serow225
http://blahg.res0l.net/2008/12/color-blind-gamer/
======
eggbrain
I never knew I was colorblind (red/green) until I was in high school -- we
were looking at Ishihara plates
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishihara_Test](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishihara_Test))
in class and I told the teacher there must be something wrong because I
couldn't see what we were supposed to see. I thought I had gotten a bad
photocopy, because I couldn't believe I had gone through life not noticing
that I was colorblind.

As I've aged I start to notice it everywhere though -- video games, greeting
cards (hello Christmas colors), and websites alike. Just yesterday, in fact, I
was reminded when I checked the reservation status for my ZipCar -- it looked
like this: [http://i.imgur.com/OkC2dG0.png](http://i.imgur.com/OkC2dG0.png).

I decided to tweet them and give them a suggestion of how to fix it (my idea:
[http://i.imgur.com/nNVUXLO.png](http://i.imgur.com/nNVUXLO.png)), but in
general it surprises me how infrequently designers/developers will think about
a large portion of the population (8-10% of males) when they sometimes will
spend days making sure IE8 or other browsers with increasingly smaller
marketshare look great.

~~~
r00fus
One of the biggest things I took from making my web front-ends section 508
compliant is to ensure that any icon doesn't use color alone to convey
information. I also take this into practice when doing presentations, as one
of my PMs was R/G color blind (we decided to include a letter to indicate
G/Y/R status in addition to the color).

What's amazing is how many interfaces in real life still fails at a level
where even a non-color-blind person like me can see it on a daily basis.

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DonHopkins
I was visiting Ocean Quigley at Maxis, the lead artist on SimCity (and many
other Maxis games), and he gave me a demo of a video filter feature in SimCity
that would adjust the colors so you could play the game with various sorts of
color blindness.

Not only that, but it also had an "empathy filter" that would adjust the
colors so people with normal color vision could see what it looked like to
people with various forms of color blindness.

I think that's an excellent accessibility feature, which should be built into
the operating system or video driver, so you can apply it to all games and
applications.

Not only are the filters to adjust the colors for color blind people useful,
but also the empathy filters are useful for developers and designers who want
to test their applications and designs to make sure they're usable by color
blind people.

[http://www.oceanquigley.com/](http://www.oceanquigley.com/)

[http://oceanquigley.blogspot.nl/](http://oceanquigley.blogspot.nl/)

~~~
brianmcc
OS integration would be amazing, could make a massive difference. I reckon any
developer - or document writer for that matter, given word processors' long
established support for colour - shown a "here's what I see" would immediately
gain a better understanding of the challenges we colour-impaired folks face.
(RAG ratings, red/amber/green, in the business world are a real pain)

~~~
DonHopkins
I'm not color blind myself (but I'm supportive ;), and I don't know much about
how it works. So I wonder if for any given kind (or instance) of color
blindness, if there is a single (or multiple) color mappings that would make
all colors distinguishable (enough), or if it would be better to be able to
adjust the color mappings on an application-by-application basis?

For example, you might want to use a different color mapping for Flower than
for Doom.

This seems like something Apple should do, since they're so good at
accessibility, and they used to have a very colorful logo, but something
happened to it over the years.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flower_(video_game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flower_\(video_game\))

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doom_(video_game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doom_\(video_game\))

~~~
brianmcc
Some sort of colour swap could indeed be helpful, an interesting idea. In my
own personal experience, though, whole ranges of colours can be confusing -
for me, red, orange, green, brown can all together be problematic. And more so
in some shades than others. Different colour blind people experience
difference types and severities.

I think we are talking about two - both good - ideas. I was thinking a "show
people with working vision what stuff looks like to the colour deficient" \-
e.g. toggled by the press of a button. Sounds like you're thinking of a
"colour management thing to help colour blind people actively change their
experience". That too could be awesome, although one down side is possibly:
for all that my vision is deficient, it's _normal_ now to me, and any
permanent screen filter would be very strange to work with.

As far as games go, the best mechanism seems one which requires no colour
vision at all: i.e. if you can still play it in black and white (TV / monitor
settings), then it's 100% friendly to the colour blind. Things like textures,
symbols, shapes, contrast, and blinking can all be useful when done
judiciously.

Of course - colour blindness is not the same as no-colour-perception.
Explaining to friends and family that I don't see black and white has been a
theme for me for 30+ years now :-)

------
RobotCaleb
I wrote this several years ago. I still work with developers when I can to
help bring their games into better shape for color blind gamers.

I recently worked with the developer of 2x0ng [0] to create a color blind mode
for his fun game. It started with solid blocks of color [1] and ended up with
patterned blocks of color [2] that resulted in the game being playable by
color blind individuals.

[0] - [http://blocky.io/2x0ng.html](http://blocky.io/2x0ng.html)

[1] -
[http://media.desura.com/cache/images/games/1/22/21729/thumb_...](http://media.desura.com/cache/images/games/1/22/21729/thumb_940x3000/Screenshot-
Blocky-7.png)

[2] - [http://imgur.com/a/098zC](http://imgur.com/a/098zC)

------
terhechte
Not only games, but also graphs/charts. I'm colorblind and I can't remember
how often I had to understand a graph where the lines were in red, green,
yellow and / or orange. And the specific colors were chosen so that they - to
me - pretty much all look alike. Then I have a look at the legend and can't
figure out which is which and the whole point of the chart is lost on me.

Example:
[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/TopTenWik...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/TopTenWikipediasGraph.png)

Hard for me to distinguish en/de/pl and ja/it and nl/pt.

------
vanderZwan
So I've been following the development of Cogmind, a Roguelike in which you
play a robot. It seems like it will do an amazing job of pushing ASCII
graphics to its limits and combining a traditional Roguelike with more modern
user interface idioms.

Anyway, being a robot, and old-school ASCII, retro-green colours are to be
expected. So I remarked on his TIGsource devlog that I was colourblind. Then
the Kyzrati, the sole developer, does this:

[http://www.gridsagegames.com/blog/2014/04/accommodating-
colo...](http://www.gridsagegames.com/blog/2014/04/accommodating-
colorblindness/)

And that is why indy-developers are awesome.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
Dang it, I just came here to post the same thing!

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beaverfox
Forgive me if this is an obvious question, but why have a colorblind mode in a
game at all? Why not just design the game UI so that it works for everyone?

For example, in Left 4 Dead, why not just use the white crosshair with black
background all the time?

Having an additional mode to a game is another thing to test, and in this case
I don't see the benefit of keeping it separate.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
Most likely, the developer feels that the "standard" mode is more
aesthetically pleasing for non-colorblind folks, and wants to accommodate the
colorblind without compromising the overall vision.

I'm inclined to agree about the specific example of the L4D crosshairs,
though.

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olgstein
Not for game, but I am colorblind and I have made this html5 utility for maps
and charts : [http://colorblindhelper.com/](http://colorblindhelper.com/) If
it can help someone!

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ajanuary
Puzzle Bobble does have symbols for different colours, just like Peggle. I
guess they're too difficult to see?

~~~
RobotCaleb
(Article author here) You know, I've never noticed that. Looking at it again I
see that you're right. I believe, however, that the gameplay tends to be too
fast to do proper pattern matching. Something, anyway, since I failed to ever
notice the patterns.

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lettergram
This article is over five years old

~~~
Red-Shift
I'm still colorblind.

