Addressing needs of the colorblind

[edmgrim]

I have a friend who is anxious to join PlayDip, but would have tremendous difficulty playing because he is colorblind. Even I sometimes have trouble telling English and German units apart. Would it be possible to create a map variant where the color scheme focusses more on contrast than hue for unit colors? Ideally, this would be a feature like the "Paint it Red/Blue toggle on the home page. The person deciding the color scheme would not be the one creating the game. Rather it would be the person using the map.

[super_dipsy]

It is a concern we have had raised before. Frankly the problem has always been creating a map with enough different 'colours' on that would work for the various different forms of colour-blindness.

What we do have is the 'hover' option which shows the territory and unit owners when you hover over them. This is the 'game display option' in the My Account page. I know it is not ideal, since it is still hard to get the overall board picture, but it is all we have.

[edmgrim]

Have you tried creating a grayscale swatch to set the contrast and then applied different hues to the swatches to get the colors. With 7 powers, you would have 9 levels:

0 -- Neutral -- White
12% -- Germany -- Tan Hue
24% -- France -- Blue Hue
36 % -- Germany -- Brown Hue
48% -- Austria -- Pink Hue
60% -- Italy -- Green Hue
72% -- Turkey -- Cyan Hue
84 % -- Russia -- Purple Hue
100 -- Text/borders -- Black

In a previous life, I could create the swatch, Unfortunately, I never really learned how to use Photoshop and the software I used to use is no longer compatible with Windows.

[super_dipsy]

I don't really understand hues and why they are easier than colours, but I'll take your word for it. However it is highly unlikely to happen unless someone wants to create the territories and units in these colours.

I think the best thing is to rely on the hover facility. Even bettter might be if the player has their own Dip set. This would allow the player to use the hover to verify the ownership and then lay them out on their map so they can view the whole board. But I realize that is not ideal - just an idea

[bard parker]

As someone who is colorblind, maybe I can share some light on the subject. First off, the hover feature is fantastic and makes it possible for all colorblind people to be able to play on this site., even though they need a bit more time to process what is happening on the map.

Color is actually quite complex and has a couple of variables, but the two that are important for this discussion are "Hue" and "value." Hue refers to the wavelength of light that is picked up by our eyes and is the traditional "red, green, blue" etc. Value determines how light/dark a color is. For example, you can have two colors that are both blue, but one can seem really dark and the other can seem quite light.

Colorblind people often mix up hues really easily, but have an excellent ability to distinguish the value of a color. By being conscientious of the value in a color scheme, the colorblind can be accommodated quite nicely.

To accommodate colorblind people, the map at PlayDip can be easily tweaked so that the colors that are easy for people to mix up are of a dramatically different value. Stoplights are a good example of a color scheme designed to accommodate the color blind.

Stoplights are designed so that colorblind people can tell apart the colors from their value. The green light is of a high value and it quite frankly looks like a white light to me. The red light on a stoplight has the "darker" value, meaning that it definitely doesn't look almost white.
The biggest problem with trying to cater to the color blind is that there are several different types of colorblind and this means that they struggle with completely different colors. Red/Green is the most common type of colorblind, but someone could be yellow-blue colorblind or some other type.

Hopefully this helps. It would be an easy fix for someone who knows what they are doing, but the color blind who are already interested in the game can work around it with the hover feature.

[super_dipsy]

Very helpful indeed! I feel I have a better understanding now.

[David E. Cohen]

There is a fairly simple alternative, which would not involve any reassignment or changing of colors. Just have a plain map where each unit is denoted by a two letter combination representing nationality and unit type. In Standard, the 14 possible units would be

AA
AF
EA
EF
FA
FF
GA
GF
IA
IF
RA
RF
TA
TF