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Colour blind users

Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2008 9:10 am
by Tortanick
I just read an article on ars technica about colour blind gamers, and it occurred to me that I haven't seen any thought about that issue here, I can't say I have the answers but it is something we should think about.

Off the top of my head possible problems are distinguishing between growth (green) and production (red) for people who have severely red/green colour blind. Throwing in a category icon would help, but I'm not sure if this one actually is an issue, its pretty clear that orbital factories is production, and nanotech medicine is growth.

Distinguishing between stars, no idea how bad this is without being colour-blind myself, differing sizes helps but the red and the brown(orange?) stars may be an issue (the pics on the article suggested that some people see red as brown). Possibly if we have a way of identifying the worst offenders* we could replace them with obviously distinct replacements in a "colour blind mode", say turn brown stars into symbolic 4 point star, or a different colour. Even if it looks bad it still doesn't interfear with gameplay.

Empire colours, probably the biggest issue we have. Not only do you have different empire colours but two empires can have different shades of the same colour. Compounding the problem is just how important an empire's colour is, on the galaxy window empire colours are used exclusively to tell what ships & stars belong to who. This defiantly could be improved: Possibilities include giving each empire a flag/choice of flags with a distinct visual motif, Ships icons could be a silised sprite based on the actual design of that races' ships. However those are probably only effective if you zoom in. Another option is an override empire colours, the player chooses a personalised set of visually distinct colours, no matter what colours the players choose for their empires, on the colour blind player's screen they come from the list.

* Anyone know of a way to make X.org simulate colour blindness?

Then there are other issues, partial sighted and the fully blind (if there even is a way we can make freeorion playable with a pure text/screenreader interface) Or deaf players. That too is something we should be thinking about.

Re: Colour blind users

Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2008 10:12 am
by pd
Tortanick wrote: I haven't seen any thought about that issue here, I can't say I have the answers but it is something we should think about.
Actually we are aware of this. It has been brought up in some cases and we favor to differentiate between shapes instead of color, if possible. However, that's not always possible and in many cases color has to be used in addition.

The thing is, we can't take every user into account. We have to simplify and create for an average user with correct vision, especially considering the very limited resources a project like this has access to. That said, the star images for example could be easily replaced by images with different shapes to represent different colors, but things like these are not a priority for us. I consider this poslishing or stuff for a mod, ideally done by people who have experience with those issues.

Re: Colour blind users

Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2008 2:05 pm
by eleazar
We've looked at this issue for Wesnoth, so the concern isn't new to me. I was somewhat surprised at the simplicity of the Ars article. There's not just one kind of color blindness, there are many, each with different weakness towards perceiving certain colors. A red-green weakness is the most common, but not the only type. Some cannot perceive color at all.

However it is a generally good practice to distinguish things by shape, pattern, and/or luminosity, as well as color whenever reasonably possible. And for things that aren't "reasonably possible" i agree with pd that if there's sufficient interest mods can be made.
Tortanick wrote:Empire colours, probably the biggest issue we have. Not only do you have different empire colours but two empires can have different shades of the same colour. Compounding the problem is just how important an empire's colour is, on the galaxy window empire colours are used exclusively to tell what ships & stars belong to who.
....
Then there are other issues, partial sighted and the fully blind (if there even is a way we can make freeorion playable with a pure text/screenreader interface) Or deaf players. That too is something we should be thinking about.
With the zoomable galaxy map we have the ability to include more info when the player zooms closer. Adding Empire flags to stars in addition to empire colors at closer zooms in one reasonable possibility.

I can't imagine that FO could ever be playable via a screen-reader. However, i don't think deaf people will have any problem. As it's a turn based game, sound-cues tend to nearly always serve as supplements to the visual cues.

Re: Colour blind users

Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2008 2:18 pm
by m_k
I don't know how to configure X.org for colour blindness simulations, but there are dozens of sites on the web, like this: http://www.vischeck.com/vischeck/vischeckImage.php , where you at least can check screenshots.
But I agree with pd thatmost of the adaption should be made in a mod, firstly because there are several forms of colour blindness, which all require different changes and secondly it would be a bit annoying to have a reduced set of colours for everyone. The colour of most items should be defined in some text files anyway (at least I think there is something like this on the programming work page), so they can be changed to differentiable colours for every type of blindness (even shades of gray for total colour blindness), you could add descriptions to each star describing the colour and so on, but all this is something for later and should be idealy done by someone with more knowledge about colour blindness. The real problem would be indeed totally blind people, there is probably the possibility that we could serialize the everything into text to be used by a screen reader but there is a huge amount of information in the gui, so later in the game completing a turn could possibly take a real long time, I don't think somebody is willing to listen to hour long drones of "...food twohundredtwentyseven, mining twelve, production..."
On further thinking, apart from text adventures and some experimental stuff, are there computer games that can be played by blind players anyway? Have the blind people simply realised that there is no use trying and given up?

On deaf players: the only sound in the game is the backgorund music and some effects when something is happening that can be seen on the screen anyway, so I don't see any problem there.

Re: Colour blind users

Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2008 3:18 pm
by Tortanick
So it is being considered, that's good :)

Re: Colour blind users

Posted: Tue Apr 15, 2008 6:56 am
by shrinkshooter
Color blind users aren't real people. No need to bother.