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Colorblindness

3 replies [Last post]
Wed, 03/16/2011 - 23:41
RacNRoll Gaming
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Joined: 05/12/2010

I am working on a game where parts of the game are defined by different colored lines. In order to make the game playable by those who are color-blind I want to mark the lines with some other marking but am unsure which is the best approach.

Thought #1- Use different line patterns for each color (solid, dotted, dashed, dot-dash-dot). While this might be the most ideal way to go in the long run I am not quite sure aesthetically it would look for those that are not colorblind.

Thought #2- Use a shape on the lines in intervals (dot, square, triangle, diamond) or at the beginning and end of each line. Again I need to mock it up to see how it looks. My concern with going via this approach is that I dont want the shapes to be too predominant but they need to still be readable.

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Thu, 03/17/2011 - 00:48
#1
CloudBuster
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Joined: 04/14/2009
I am colorblind - sort of

Howdy!
First of all, I think the idea of solid, colored lines with shapes at the beginning, middle and end of the line is a great idea. You don't need to make 'em very big. I'm sure that experimenting with the sizes will allow you to come up with a happy medium.

Second...my colorblindness isn't all that bad. I have have some trouble distinguishing between certain shades unless they're right next to each other. Solid, primary and secondary colors are fine for me. However, if you Google "color blindness test" you'll eventually come to a site that shows several slides with a bunch of colored dots. There are shapes in these arrays of colored dots. A ship, a square, a number.

I can't see these at all. I just see a bunch of colored dots.

As I'm typing this, I'm looking around at the screen and I can tell that the "Reply" and "Quote" buttons at the end of your post are blue with white writing. I can see the "F" in front of the posts is Green with white writing. The "J" has a blue background. The "B" has a red background. And yet...I cannot see the shapes in those colored dots.

-CB-

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Thu, 03/17/2011 - 02:16
#2
Yamahako
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Joined: 12/01/2010
there are 2 forms of

there are 2 forms of colorblindness. I have the same kind you have - a difficulty telling the difference between close shades of colors. An optometrist once told me that it was due to either a rod, or cone difficiency in my eyes (I don't remember which)

My father is red/green color blind - he can't distinguish those two colors.

In all of my games, I use either shapes, or numbers, or patterns to differentiates. I believe that a shape at the beginning of a line will work.

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Thu, 03/17/2011 - 08:03
#3
drktron
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Joined: 07/18/2010
I'm actually an optometrist

I'm actually an optometrist so this topic interests me. There are more than two types of colorblindness but the most common is red-green deficiency. Most color deficiency is an X-linked recessive genetic defect of the cones (the rods are for night and peripheral vision). This is why it is very rare in females (they must inherit the defective gene from both parents). There are 3 types of cones: those for long, medium, and short wavelengths of light (red, green,blue). One can have either a partial or complete deficiency for each of these cone types or all 3 (the rare total colorblindness).

Anyway I like the idea of the small symbols at each end of the lines.

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