Team "colors" for colorblind people

SmokemJags · Post by **SmokemJags** » February 16th, 2006, 9:53 am

I'm no expert on the issue so you may very well be right about that. I was doing my best not to assume anything and was simply judging from what I saw here: uploaded pictures that are pretty much grey, colorless units with alternative markings to show ownership.

Sea Elf · Post by **Sea Elf** » February 18th, 2006, 2:50 am

instead of differant shapes would differant patterns or a combination of both be good?

Cuyo Quiz · Post by **Cuyo Quiz** » February 18th, 2006, 3:17 am

Sea Elf wrote:instead of differant shapes would differant patterns or a combination of both be good?

I wonder if the different shapes can be used as some sort of numbering system (i doubt numbers can be clearly shown below the hex), since for games with many teams or free for all. A shape to mark allies/foes should help a long way too.

jonadab · Post by **jonadab** » February 18th, 2006, 3:32 am

martenzo wrote:You know, most colorblind people just can't see a certain colour, they don't always see everything grey. So I think that if the colour is shown in the beginning of the game, they would understand what colour are their ellipses supposed to be.

There are different types of colorblindness, but as far as I'm aware not being able to see a certain color isn't one of them. (Not being able to distinguish certain colors from one another is, however, a very common one. In particular, red and green are indistinguishable or nearly so to a very significant minority of colorblind people.) Showing everything in greyscale is just quick way for a person with normal vision to get a basic idea of whether the values alone are enough to make things distinguishable. It does not, and is not intended to, exactly simulate what things will look like to a colorblind person, but if everything is easily distinguishable in greyscale, then chances are good that a colorblind person (of whichever type) will have few problems.

This does leave open the matter of different types of greyscale, which gets into color spaces (HSV, HSL, ...), so if you want to be extra careful you could do more, but just desaturating the images is a good start.

Post by **Viliam** » February 20th, 2006, 2:42 pm

Thanks for all the feedback!

Now I think the idea was just too difficult. The easiest way to easily show the team is this (see attachment). It only takes a few pixels, and is completely obvious. Using the existing numbers is better than trying to discover them again in some quasi-binary form.

(PS: Yes the images were grayscale to convey how they may look to the fully colorblind people.)

Implementing this solution does not require writing a new code. Only editing files "ellipse*.png". The number could be shown in the same color as the ellipse.

Lugo Moll · Post by **Lugo Moll** » February 20th, 2006, 2:55 pm

Are there really fully colorblind people? I thought they just where unable to tell the difference between red and green. At least, that is the common variant.

Tux2B · Post by **Tux2B** » February 20th, 2006, 3:29 pm

Lugo Moll wrote:Are there really fully colorblind people? I thought they just where unable to tell the difference between red and green. At least, that is the common variant.

That is the most common variant (and the fact there are some people justifies the existence of something helping them to play Wesnoth as any other player) but there are some fully colour-blind people.

Lugo Moll · Post by **Lugo Moll** » February 20th, 2006, 7:29 pm

Yes, but that is such a small group so that it's pretty pointless to change the game just for them. Red-green color blindness, on the other hand, is about 4% of all males, so there may be a point in adapting to them.

wolfy · Post by **wolfy** » February 20th, 2006, 8:01 pm

Lugo Moll wrote:Yes, but that is such a small group so that it's pretty pointless to change the game just for them. Red-green color blindness, on the other hand, is about 4% of all males, so there may be a point in adapting to them.

I disagree. This should be optional- but making Wesnoth friendly for coloblind people is good decision.

entropomorphic · Post by **entropomorphic** » February 20th, 2006, 8:13 pm

There are many different kinds of colorblindness, some of which are more rare than others. Among these is the inability to see any color at all. Therefore, to deal with the most general case of colorblindness, accessibility programmers are encouraged to test their program in greyscale.

While some disabilities (like full-out legal blindness) might be unfeasable to make Wesnoth accessible for, colorblindness should be easy enough, as demonstrated by Viliam above. There's really no reason not to if somebody wants to spend the time to do it right...

Cuyo Quiz · Post by **Cuyo Quiz** » February 20th, 2006, 8:19 pm

I would use it, and i'm not colorblind. It looks that good.

Tux2B · Post by **Tux2B** » February 20th, 2006, 8:41 pm

wolfy wrote:
Lugo Moll wrote:Yes, but that is such a small group so that it's pretty pointless to change the game just for them. Red-green color blindness, on the other hand, is about 4% of all males, so there may be a point in adapting to them.
I disagree. This should be optional- but making Wesnoth friendly for coloblind people is good decision.

And I agree with this disagreement.

And Viliam's idea is easy to put in-game as you would just need to change some png's. If you want to make it very user friendly, you can make it be another theme. So why saying that you don't need it?

Post by **turin** » February 21st, 2006, 1:13 am

Sure, it's possible, but IIRC our plan was to remove all the elipses.png and replace them with one, Tcolored elipse. I guess this will make that plan null.

Complete color blindness is really, really rare. So much so that it is pointless to try to adapt Wesnoth to their needs. It would be like trying to make it playable by blind people - sorry, but I really doubt any blind people will ever be able to play Wesnoth.

romnajin · Post by **romnajin** » February 21st, 2006, 2:31 am

I think I like that idead the best, either putting as an option in preferences, or making it a custom "color blind" theme.

Post by **Maeglin Dubh** » February 21st, 2006, 2:58 am

I think this is one of those ideas that will either be implemented or scrapped... Options are not always desireable.

I can see the appeal of both sides. I am red-green colorblind, and I don't usually have trouble reading T-color elipses, but there are occasions.

On the other hand, substituting 8-9 different elipses for a single T-color elipse might be overly cumbersome... But not, in any way, impossible.