Feb 13, 2010
The issue of making video games accessible to all forms of gamers with disabilities has been a long standing challenge, and often an over looked obstacle. Many gamers have been left out on certain games due to disabilities. Like Assassins Creed’s lack of subtitles makes it impossible for deaf gamers to know the plot whilst playing. However, the disability at hand is a bit of an unexpected, but understandable one; color blindness. Only 5% of males and a mere 0.5% of females are born color blind. However, whose to say that that percentage of the population doesn’t like gaming?
An intriguing issue recently brought up on 2K’s forums was that the hacking system is literally impossible for gamers who are color blind. While hacking you must land the arrow on various colors to receive different effects, green for hack, red for alarm, white for shock, and blue for a reward. However, let’s take a look at this through a color blind person’s view. The above image is an image of how the hacking system looks to a person that is trichromatic (can see all pigments normally). But if we change the pigment hues around a bit….
…and voila! This is how someone who is Deuteranomalous will see the hack system. Those who have Deuteranomaly suffer from what is referred to as ‘green weakness’. In other words, green hues are either very faint or not present at all through their eyes. Most have extreme difficulty discriminating between reds, greens, and yellows, because they all look similar if not the same. As you can see the green has turned to a faded yellow, and the red a slightly more vivid yellow, whereas blue is still blue. Now let’s change the colors again…
…you are now seeing through the eyes of a person who has Protanopia. Those who suffer from Protanopia have a ‘red weakness’. Meaning that the amount of red visible is reduced to almost nothing. In addition the brightness of colors is reduced based on how much red hue they actually have. The dimming of colors can be so extreme that reds may be viewed as black or dark gray. As you can see in the above picture, the green has turned to a mustard color, the red to a more brown, and blue is still as blue. Protanopias may have less difficulty discerning the colors than Deutanopias based solely off of the brightness of the colors. However, let’s take one more color change…
…HUGE difference, huh? You are seeing through the more colorful eyes of one who has Tritanopia. Tritanopia is the rarest form of colorblindness, but the most prominent in color changes. Tritanopia is a blue-yellow defect, meaning that they can not distinguish the difference between blue and yellow, and can cause the almost complete absence of yellow hues. Obviously this is the group that will have the largest problem with the hacking system. There is no distinguishable difference between the blue for blue and blue for green here, not even shade differences.
Obviously this was a MAJOR aspect that was overlooked during the games development, causing many color blind gamers to loose out. But this just makes you wonder how many other games we play that those with disabilities cannot. Hopefully 2K will release some sort of patch to remedy the situation making the game available for all gamers.
Do you think that game developers should focus more on those with disabilities? Have you run into a problem with games due to a disability of yours or a family member or friend?
Image Source: negativegamer.com
Great post, Lyn.
I’ve always had a massive issue with the ignorance of game development when it comes to accessibility (it’s part of my day job). There are laws in place to ensure that disabled people aren’t discriminated against when it comes to the provision of goods and services in the UK, yet for some reason, this isn’t properly considered when it comes to gaming.
This particular issue of colour-blindness is actually only a tiny fragment of a bigger issue that devs should be considering – and I think it’s about time that the industry meaningfully addressed it.
I concur. My brother, having a disability, has a very limited game choice. I also have a friend who is deaf and she gets mad when she can’t play games because the developers couldn’t put in the effort of subtitles. Its disappointing to me that developers so easily overlook gamers with disabilities.
Have you ever visited http://www.ablegamers.com? It’s a great site/resource for disabled gamers. :)
Oh wow, no. I had no clue such a site even existed! Thanks a ton, my brother will be so happy to find some games to play that are good. He’s gotten bored of playing the same three Wii games over and over again for the past year.
it’s easy to overlook things like you said
but when the developers realize that they made a mistake after the release they are to lazy to do something about it
it would be wonderful if they would make a colour blind friendly ‘mod’ that you could download for free or a dowloadable censor for the ones who dislike swearing or bigger letters for short sighted people like myself
if they made work of these kind of things people with a disability would be more incouraged to purchase that game. wich means more money for the developers.
I have Protanopia, but I normally go for the blue anyway so it doesn’t make much of a difference to me. However, in other games (such as Modern Warfare 2) Red/Green used as a team distinguisher can become very annoying.
5% male and 0.5% female in a population 50/50 male/female is 2.75% of color blind.
In the gamers world is about 5%.
Approx. 65% of US households play video games. Given approx. 114,825,428 households in the US in 2010, 5% represents 5,741,271 households.
And that’s a LOT of people.
Yeah, in today’s world that has 6 billion+ people, 5% is a LOT of people. Despite the fact that it seems small, its in reality quite a few.
I just tried to correct the (otherwise good and interisting) post: 5% of male and 0.5% of female is about 2.75% of people, not 5.5%.
Mine last sentence was a joke: it’s good if girls and women play video games. :-)
Ooohhh *feels stupid* Heheh. I was always crap at percentages.