Small, simple adjustments could make the gaming experience much more accessible for players with colour blindness as David Williams shares
Video games are among the most visually rich and immersive forms of media ever created. From glowing loot drops and colour-coded mini maps to flashing damage indicators and team markers, colour plays a central role in how players understand and interact with virtual worlds. What happens when players don’t see colour the way designers expect?
For millions of people around the world, colour perception works differently. Colour vision deficiency, commonly known as colour blindness, affects how individuals distinguish between certain hues. In a medium that so heavily relies on colour to communicate information, this can create real barriers to gameplay. Designing with accessibility in mind is a fundamental part of creating fair, inclusive, and high-quality gaming experiences.
Seeing differently
CVD occurs when the cone cells in the eye that are responsible for detecting red, green and blue light do not function as expected. This results in a difficulty in distinguishing between certain colours. Globally, an estimated 300 million people live with some form of CVD.
The most common types include:
- Red deficiency (Protanopia/ Protanomaly): Reds appear darker and can be difficult to distinguish from green.
- Green deficiency (Deuteranopia/Deuteranomaly): The most common form, often causing muted or confusing red-green perception.
- Blue deficiency (Tritanopia/ Tritanomaly): A rare condition affecting blue-yellow differentiation.
- Achromatopsia: An extremely rare condition where vision is largely grayscale.
Importantly, most people with colour blindness do not see in black and white, they see colour differently.
Where games fall short
Colour is often used to communicate information, which can greatly impact the enjoyment and performance of players with CVD. It impacts:
- Team Identification: Many multiplayer games rely on colour, like red versus green or red versus blue, to distinguish teams. For players with red-green deficiencies, these distinctions can blur together.
- HUD and UI Indicators: Health bars, status effects, mini maps and objective markers often depend on colour alone. A poison effect shown only as a green overlay or low health indicated solely by a red flash can easily go unnoticed.
- Loot and Rarity Systems: The familiar rarity system (grey, green, blue, purple, gold) can become confusing when colours are hard to distinguish. Blue and purple or green and brown may appear nearly identical to some players.
- Puzzle Mechanics: Games that rely on colour-matching puzzles can unintentionally block progression entirely for colourblind players.
In fast-paced or competitive environments, even a slight delay in recognising visual cues can mean the difference between winning and losing.
What developers can do
Accessibility for players with CVD is grounded in a simple but powerful principle: Information should never rely on colour alone. This idea, widely promoted in accessibility standards like the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, translates directly into better game design. This includes:
- Use more than colour for markers: Colour should support meaning, but not carry it alone. Designers can reinforce information through icons and symbols, patterns and textures, text labels or shapes and position, for example using different shapes (triangles vs squares) as team markers.
- Provide more options: Many games include colourblind presets, but not all are effective as simple hue-shirts can fall short. Instead, developers can look at adjusting specific UI elements, allow players to customise colours, and test these modes with real players.
- Prioritise contrast: A strong contrast between foreground and background is critical for readability and clarity. This is useful to all players!
- Avoid certain colour pairings: Some colour combinations are notoriously difficult to distinguish, such as red and green, blue and purple, green and brown or green and yellow. Instead, combine colour differences with brightness (light vs. dark) to improve visibility.
- Test early and often: Real-world testing with players who have CVD provides the most valuable insights. Simulation tools can assist with approximating different types of vision, but real players can confirm if the game is accessible or not.
Future of inclusive play
Designing for colourblind players improves usability across the board. Clearer visuals help players who are in bright sunlight on their device, in low-light environments, on smaller screens or are in fast-paced gameplay.
As the gaming industry continues to grow, so does its responsibility to its players. Accessibility is a marker of quality, care and innovation. Designing for colour blindness expands creativity to ensure that more people can fully experience the worlds developers work so hard to build.
