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Color Blindness Check

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Color Blindness Check

Postby RjBeals on Wed Jun 04, 2008 7:17 pm

Is there a guide, or can someone comment on which colors are the most hard distinguish for color blind people? Is it the blues/purples or the reds/oranges? I guess that's Oaktown & Ruben..

edit:
MrBenn wrote:The most common form of colourblindness is red-green, although some people can have yellow-blue colourblindness.

This webiste: http://www.vischeck.com/vischeck/vischeckImage.php has a useful simulator, which you can use to see how an image may look to someone who is colourblind.
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Re: Color Blindness

Postby rocky mountain on Wed Jun 04, 2008 7:19 pm

don't they get reds and greens mixed up or something?
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Re: Color Blindness

Postby gimil on Wed Jun 04, 2008 7:20 pm

There are many different forms of colour blindness. Usually a good place to start thought is to avoid putting two similar shades of closely related colours together.
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Re: Color Blindness

Postby wcaclimbing on Wed Jun 04, 2008 7:26 pm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_blindness
There are lots of different kinds and degrees of color blindness, not just one set kind.
So, for different people, different colors are bad.
So, I guess it depends on who you are talking to.
I'm not colorblind, but I've known one or two people that are.

A trick that I would use (not sure if its the best, but it makes sense to me) is to convert a copy of your image to greyscale. If you have any problems seeing anything with it in black and white, chances are that some people might have trouble seeing it in the colored version.

If you are doing text or colors, try to make it stand out not only by color, but also by brightness and saturation. that makes it easier to see.
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Re: Color Blindness

Postby gimil on Wed Jun 04, 2008 7:29 pm

Te greyscale trick is definetly a good one that I use from time to time. Althought two diffrerent colours can appear the same in greyscale.
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Re: Color Blindness

Postby MrBenn on Thu Jun 05, 2008 5:31 am

Colourblindness is more common in males than females, and roughly 1 in 20 people have some form of colour-vision deficiency.

The most common form of colourblindness is red-green, although some people can have yellow-blue colourblindness.

This webiste: http://www.vischeck.com/vischeck/vischeckImage.php has a useful simulator, which you can use to see how an image may look to someone who is colourblind.
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Re: Color Blindness

Postby gimil on Thu Jun 05, 2008 5:39 am

That seems like a pretty cool tool ben. If we can find out its reliability it coulse be added to the map making tools.
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Re: Color Blindness

Postby t-o-m on Thu Jun 05, 2008 5:45 am

well i used that on my map and these are the results...not very promising!

normal:
http://vischeck.homeip.net/uploads/1212662682_orig.jpg

with colour blindness:
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Re: Color Blindness

Postby RjBeals on Thu Jun 05, 2008 7:23 am

I ran my map trough as well. I can tell the regions apart, except for the yellow/green colorblind version at the bottom (Tritanope). But it sure doesn't look pretty. I guress there's no way to check the validity of the conversion though - as nobody can turn colorblindness on and off when they want :?

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Re: Color Blindness

Postby t-o-m on Thu Jun 05, 2008 7:55 am

people could make an option in the UPC of turning "colour blindness on|off" and map makers could now go and (if not too much trouble) change the colour regions for the colour blind? i wouldnt mind doing it 'cause its not a big problem doing it.
i feel really sorry for the colour blind now! not that i didnt before but i think this is a wakeup call as to how bad it is, they must struggle a lot.
btw Rj, the bottom one doesnt look so bad, a bit monotonous though lol.
those yellows that the test come out with really make me feel sick.
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Re: Color Blindness

Postby MrBenn on Thu Jun 05, 2008 8:23 am

RjBeals wrote:I ran my map trough as well. I can tell the regions apart, except for the yellow/green colorblind version at the bottom (Tritanope). But it sure doesn't look pretty. I guress there's no way to check the validity of the conversion though - as nobody can turn colorblindness on and off when they want :?


I can tell the difference on all those images, so perhaps you've just discovered that you're colourblind! :shock:

I think there's a disclaimer on the site about the validity of the conversion... It depends on monitor settings as well as the whole psychological debate about whether my green is the same as your green... :roll:

I anything, I'd make the grey region very slightly lighter, and I think you shold be allright colourblindwise (after you're visit to the optician! :lol:)
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Re: Color Blindness

Postby MrBenn on Thu Jun 05, 2008 8:28 am

t-o-m wrote:i feel really sorry for the colour blind now! not that i didnt before but i think this is a wakeup call as to how bad it is, they must struggle a lot.


It makes quite interesting reading... At work we have a lot of performance stats that are traffic-light coloured (ie Red=bad, orange=OK, green=good) - I did some work a while ago on this, as they can all look the same... It's quite strange to be told that someone genuinely can't spot the 2 red figures on a page of 100s of greens!

It is weird seeing the colour-muted pictures though - we'll have to get some feedback from people like Oak and Ruben to see which 'converted' pics look most similar to the original?
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Re: Color Blindness

Postby seamusk on Thu Jun 05, 2008 8:29 am

this tool is pretty cool. It really helps in an area where I was mostly guessing.
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Re: Color Blindness

Postby oaktown on Thu Jun 05, 2008 8:46 am

everything said here pretty much rings true... I get asked all the time what a mapmaker can do to make their colors colorblind-friendly, and since there's no single type of colorblindness there isn't much I can say.

The trouble usually isn't with the larger fields of a single color. For instance, on Tack's Citadel map I can easily tell the regions apart. Regions can become problematic when the colors have some marbling going on, as in the Texas map - within any one region there are several shades, some of which resemble shades in other regions. Some maps are more trouble for me personally, because they use colors next to each other that I have particular trouble with... one example being the blues and purples in Battle of Actium, which I avoid.

The bigger problem is with small samples of a color, such as thin lines or text. For instance, I can't tell some of the army count colors apart - the red from the green, the "c" from the "p" whatever they're supposed to be - but the colorblind game option helps overcome this. (Mapmakers should be aware that when using the colorblind help, all two-digit counts become three digits, so leave plenty of space around your army circles!) What the colorblind help does not assist with is any features of the map that rely on my being able to determine a thin area of a color, e.g. the name of regions in the legend of the old Citadel drafts, the legend boxes in Indochina or circles on Ireland, the color of the borders in the Dark Age Britain drafts, or the color of a rail line or station in Rail USA.

How to make your map colorblind friendly:
1. Use texture or patterns as well as or instead of color. The new France map has a nice the textured border glow.
2. Use inset maps - can't go wrong there, because even if I can't tell the colors apart I can use location as my guide.
3. Give some other clues on the map itself - location or text clues - as cairnswk has been good enough to do in the Rail Europe map.

I'll try to think of more, but right now I'm late for work!
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Re: Color Blindness

Postby t-o-m on Thu Jun 05, 2008 10:34 am

oaktown wrote:I'll try to think of more, but right now I'm late for work!

pfft who needs work when you've got CC! :P

some interesting points there oak, you said that textures could help solve the problem - but are you talking about difference textures or different regions? or just the same all the way through?
different for each region would look messy wouldnt it?
you mentioned the texan wars map and marblling, i like that although i can see the bad aspect for colourblind people; i dont really find it confusing, however.

this is quite a usefull topic - i wonder what ruben has to say?
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Re: Color Blindness

Postby yeti_c on Thu Jun 05, 2008 10:40 am

t-o-m wrote:some interesting points there oak, you said that textures could help solve the problem - but are you talking about difference textures or different regions? or just the same all the way through?
different for each region would look messy wouldnt it?
you mentioned the texan wars map and marblling, i like that although i can see the bad aspect for colourblind people; i dont really find it confusing, however.

this is quite a usefull topic - i wonder what ruben has to say?


Different textures to signify different areas.

Oak doesn't have problems differentiating borders - he can see them... the problem lies in working out which territory belongs to what continent...

If you want a great example of textures - see the Berlin map (by oaktown)

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Re: Color Blindness

Postby t-o-m on Thu Jun 05, 2008 10:50 am

yeti_c wrote:If you want a great example of textures - see the Berlin map (by oaktown)

i love those textures!

yeti_c wrote:the problem lies in working out which territory belongs to what continent...

could a mini-map not help that?
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Re: Color Blindness

Postby yeti_c on Thu Jun 05, 2008 10:55 am

t-o-m wrote:
yeti_c wrote:If you want a great example of textures - see the Berlin map (by oaktown)

i love those textures!

yeti_c wrote:the problem lies in working out which territory belongs to what continent...

could a mini-map not help that?


Not if the minimap isn't accurate enough to tell you exactly where the borders are.

Case in point - "Feudal war"

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Re: Color Blindness

Postby t-o-m on Thu Jun 05, 2008 11:06 am

my first few times on feudal war i miss deployed loads, i dont like the fact that barbarian 6 is next to lake 6, ive miss attack/forted a lot. i think that could be addressed, not very urgent though, not a big deal either
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Re: Color Blindness

Postby TaCktiX on Thu Jun 05, 2008 11:13 am

Ouch. I just ran simulations on The Citadel in all three types, and not a single one is particularly nice to the legend, or parts of the map in some cases. Good thing is that most people with colorblindness are deuteranope, which was the kindest one to the map. And I see the conflict with region names quite clearly now.
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Re: Color Blindness

Postby Mjinga on Sat Sep 27, 2008 2:18 pm

:shock:

I can't tell the difference between your Deuteranope and Protanope images, RJ!
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Re: Color Blindness

Postby bryguy on Sat Sep 27, 2008 3:30 pm

TaCktiX wrote:Ouch. I just ran simulations on The Citadel in all three types, and not a single one is particularly nice to the legend, or parts of the map in some cases. Good thing is that most people with colorblindness are deuteranope, which was the kindest one to the map. And I see the conflict with region names quite clearly now.


i did the same to Famine, and the first to look really bad (the trees turn brown :shock: , water turns grey :shock: , and the oasis looks all funky :shock: ), the second looked alot like the first, and the third looked okay, except all the colors were really dulled, and the desert looked like a burnt pancake in my opinion
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Re: Color Blindness

Postby yeti_c on Sun Sep 28, 2008 10:17 am

Mjinga wrote::shock:

I can't tell the difference between your Deuteranope and Protanope images, RJ!


Isn't that the idea?!

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Re: Color Blindness

Postby GrasshopperLies on Thu Oct 02, 2008 6:30 pm

on that Charleston map it all looks about the same colour to me except for the yellow bit which looks like Florida
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