Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Color blindness
According to
Psychophysics of Vision
by
Michael Kalloniatis
and
Charles Luu
, about 8
percent of men and 0.5 percent of women have some form of color blindness. This is
a significant number of people (most of them are males because of gene mechanics),
many of them can become your customers. You should take care of this category of
players, which is much easier than you can assume. The following figure shows the
players with different types of vision:
I think it is more correct to use the term color vision deficiency instead of color blind-
ness, because people with different forms of color vision deficiencies basically do see
colors, they have no black and white vision, based on shades of grey (except for a
very rare disorder called achromatopsia). But they have difficulties with some of the
colors and relative shades; for them there is a shift in the spectrum for specific colors.
Color receptors give a response closer in hues to other colors, which creates trouble
in perceiving differences between shades. Usually, such people have their own char-
acteristics for each specific color, based on its saturation and brightness; however,
sometimes such parameters are not powerful enough to spot the difference between
specific colors. The following are the most common forms of color vision deficiencies
(according to Colorblind Vision application):
•
Deuteranopia
: This is one of the common forms resulting in people having
problems with the perception of the color green, because there is a shift to-
wards the red color. Hues such as orange and yellow are affected as well.
People have trouble in perceiving differences between shades of red and
green; in some cases they can look the same or very close. A total of 5 per-
cent of males and 0.38 percent of females have this deficiency.
•
Protanopia
: People have difficulties with the red color, the shift is directed
towards the green color. It is similar to deuteranopia, with people having the
same problems with the red-green pair and its derivatives as yellow and or-
ange. 2.5 percent of males and 0.002 percent of females have protapia.
