The BIGGEST Mistake Game Devs Make With Colour Blind Accessibility - Access-Ability

[@dondashall]

That's a shocking issue, thanks for highlighting this. I remember Mark Brown mentioning Doom (2016) having this same issue way back (not sure if still a problem). Great video as always, Laura.

[@LauraKBuzz]

Yep, this is kind of why I am talking about it, it has been happening for years and still is not well known enough to have stopped happening.

[@MxReese]

Thank you so much! Strong Protanomaly colorblindness here. Yes, lots of devs will say they checked their work with colorblindness simulators, but then actual colorblind players will still find the game completely inaccessible. Sliders are essential, especially because people have colorblindness to varying degrees. You can't just have 3 filters and then call it a day. Those also aren't going to be accessible to monochrome colorblind players. Laura does a superb job of explaining how to use color in the design from the beginning. Bravo Laura, nobody ever gets those details right. Symbology is huge. Among Us had a great patch for the wire game adding basic shapes on either side. And while Borderlands (2 and the pre-sequel, not sure about the others) used the standard MMO color hierarchy for gear rarity, when you had colorblind mode enabled it had an overly over the rarity color bar that said the name in big white block letters. Which was huge because even with colorblindness filters enabled I can still almost never tell blue from purple. I so wish that Daed By Daylight had that Spiderman game feature you showed where you can choose the color of important elements. There are multiple maps where the color grading is so severe that I straight up cannot see scratch marks or even highlighted generators and hooks at all and I am just doomed if I roll one of those maps. Oh my god, Laura, you're telling me that the reason I cannot tell any difference between normal and protan mode at all in most games is because they're simulating my colorblindness instead of correcting it! I genuinely didn't think I could get more angry about how little thought and effort goes into colorblindness accessibility than I already am, but I was wrong. Thank you so much, Laura. This is the most comprehensively thorough (and correct, lots of people I've seen speak with authority on the subject are very wrong) discussion of colorblindness accessibility I've ever seen and contains some knowledge that took me, an actual colorblind person, years to research and learn on my own in order to try to brute-force accommodate my own colorblindness because developers just don't care. (And not even just game developers, enterprise office software is way way way worse than video games at colorblindness accessibility.)

[@EdBurke37]

I remember all the way back when the Wrath of the Lich King expansion for World of Warcraft first came out and one of the things that they announced was colorblind mode. I had had multiple times in the game nearly wiped entire groups because certain things were color-coded in a way I couldn't see so when the patch that implemented colorblind mode finally arrived I excitedly went to my options and turned it on. Do you know what the color blind mode was back in 2008? It was a little tag under the names of each item telling you what rarity it was so you didn't have to rely on the green blue or purple color designation. I was so disappointed.

[@kaitlyn__L]

Honestly, I don't think I'm colourblind even but the colour-coded attacks in demon swarm PvEs is what got me to stop playing entirely... I enjoyed the early game single-player experience but in PvE having to keep track of 20 AOEs with different colours was hell for me

[@MxReese]

That is terrible, but most games today still won't even do that little to throw us a bone and it make me furious because that doesn't even take effort.

[@HotDogTimeMachine385]

This is really helpful! Thank you!

[@Tugennov]

This is great! I hope more developers consider the issues you mention in this video.

[@kenraves7931]

Oh my god thank you so much for this!! I am still trying to learn more about this disability that affects so many people!!

[@marcelloz071]

Great video and I can really relate to that. As a colour blind person I ofter am happy to see the option in games but most of the time turn if off again as it really washes out the colors of the game by using blue-ish or puple colors instead of green-red. It's like putting on those orange-filtered glasses that totally changes the world you look at.. I think Ubisoft has done this several times for Assassin Creed games. Good implementation indeed use a slider to adjust saturation or intensity, offer larger icons or different icons. Also, if a character wears a green shirt and it is in fact brown, I don't care! Nobody in the game will point that out that that colour is different. Only time is when you play competative games against each other but when playing single player games I just don't care as it represents the real world better. I think XBOX has a great system where you can adjust the colors system-wide so you don't need to fiddle with it in every game.

[@jamesrule1338]

The alternate use of symbols to communicate to the player was, for me, the difference between completely unplayable (Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo) and a fun game I could play with others (Puzzle Bobble). EDIT: Just to be clear, yes I am colourblind.

[@meander112]

Engagement for the engagement god!

[@Avi2Nyan]

Fantastic video! I am now wondering about the "colourblind" mode of Splatoon....

[@munafruit]

when i saw the title i hoped i was wrong about what i thought the mistake might be but unfortunately i guessed correctly 😅