Let's start with a small story :
One day, I run Elemental to check on the Beta 1C. As I remember discussion about a new research system, I pick the Kingdom with the research boost, and I go on my merry way researching a bunch of technologies. But how was I to know which technologies were going to be available at the next breakthrough? Simple : some were colored red, some yellow and some yellow.
Err, what?
I was unable to distinguish which technologies were to be always (green) and sometimes (yellow) available. As you can guess from the topic, I am colorblind and thus, I have difficulties distinguishing yellow and light green. Therefore, on quite important piece of information from the research screen is unavailable to me.
So what can be done? I am certain that I am not the only colorblind person who is ever going to play this game, but I have no idea what are the problematic colors for the other ones. So simply banning light green and cyan (which I can confuse with white) is not going to help much. Thus here are some other propositions which would help one such as me (ordered from most useful to less) :
- Make the information available by another mean than color : Color may be used as the quick way to get the info, but another mean must be presented. Tooltips would be great, and can also be used for more detailed information at the same time.
- Do not only vary the hue : It is way easier to distinguish between light yellow and dark green than between light yellow and light green. You do not need to revert to while/grey/black, but light yellow/average green/dark red would work wonder.
- Bold text and lines : The thinner the colored text, the harder it is for me to distinguish the colors. So bolded yellow and green are easier to contrast.
Note : for some reason, I have no problem with the green text on this forum. But in game, it is amazing how hard it is to me to realize it is not yellow. Is it due to the contrast? Do they have different RGB values? I don't know.
