People love social advocacy nowadays, and this advocacy ranges from helpful to pointless to insane. Within the realm of disabilities, one can contemplate numerous abstract ideas. What should the limits be? How much of a cost should the non-disabled have to bear? We can’t accommodate everyone, and, for some accommodations, the benefits probably outweigh the costs. We must also avoid encouraging disability. I’ve seen some very online people who seem to adopt every mental disorder that exists, alongside some that don’t.
I’ll avoid the abstract philosophy here. Instead, I’ll focus on one type of disability advocacy where the benefits clearly outweigh the costs: colorblindness. It impacts a lot of people and doesn’t cost much to mitigate. I’m also not worried about encouraging it. I don’t expect to see any TikTok-addled teenagers faking colorblindness, though I don’t want to give them any idea.
When we weigh the costs and benefits of an accessibility policy, we have to consider the impacted population. If few people suffer from a problem, few will benefit from its solution. That’s not the case with color blindness. Estimates vary, but it seems to afflict around 8% of men and a small number of women. Colorblindness takes a few different forms: Deuteranopia, Protanopia, and Tritanopia. I oppose using Latin and Greek words when the Germanic ones work just fine, so I’ll call these “Green Blind,” “Red Blind,” and “Blue Blind.” Green Blind remains the most common (around 6% of men), followed by Red Blind (2%) and Blue Blind (<1%). The respective ailments look like this:
As a result, many men can’t tell red apart from green. This difficulty extends to colors that contain red or green, such as purple and orange. That’s a problem for many areas of life, but I’ll focus on one area I know a lot about board games. After all, Jamey Stegmaier recently released a video discussing the same issue. Note that I’ll focus on Red and Green Blindness in articles, as Blue Blindness remains far less prevalent.
The Problem
Simply put: board games like red and green. Consider Le Havre, a classic Euro game that seats up to five players. You can probably think of five colors that are neither red nor green, but, apparently, the Z-Man Games could not:
Each ship represents a different player, so we need to tell them apart. No issue for me, but if you suffer from Geen Blindness
or Red Blindness:
you’re not going to know when it’s your turn.
Or, consider the yellow, red, green, and brown resource cubes in Century: Spice Road.
Beautiful! But if you’re Green Blind:
Yellow, light brown, yellowish-light brown, and brown. Thanks guys!
And for the Red Blind:
Two yellows and two browns! This one disappointed me so much, that I didn’t even realize I downloaded a picture of the German version. Luckily, this isn’t a difficult problem to solve. Here’s five accessibility solutions.
Solution One: Use Different Shapes
This one is the most expensive. I’ve advocated for cheaper games in the past, so I can’t expect every publisher to implement it. However, I will expect a bit more of it in the world of bloated Kickstarters. Instead of releasing a 60-hour campaign that people will play for only 10 hours, and publishers could release 55-hour campaigns that colorblind people will play for only 10 hours. A great example of shapes comes from PARKS. Even if you painted every piece with the same color, no one would struggle to differentiate them.
Sure, it might not make sense thematically. You’re collecting, what, the mere concept of sunniness and mountain-ness? It looks pretty though, and it’s accessible to everyone.
Solution Two: Double Code
This works like the first one, but it doesn’t require different shapes for every component. Instead, symbols label each component. One good example is Azul, where different patterns adorn the tiles.
Another good example comes from the elements in Spirit Island. A lazier design might have stuck to colors, but the game adds unique signifiers.
Ironically, Spirit Island fails to do this with its player components. Then again, if you ever decide to play Spirit Island with five players, you’ll have bigger issues than color blindness.
You don’t even have to get that creative. Again, this is easy. You can always just number stuff! Check out Long Shot: The Dice Game.
Solution Three: Pick a Different Color
Consider Camel Up, my favorite party game.
Here’s what that looks like with Green Blindness and Red Blindness, respectively:
The blue and purple camels look similar under both Red and Green Blindness. I know what you’re thinking. We can’t remove the purple camel because it adds so much realism to the game. That argument, however, fails to account for the fact that the world was in black-and-white back then. I’d prefer numbering the camels, but we can also just choose a new color
That’s from selecting the standard brown in MS Paint. It’s not a perfect solution. That color looks a bit too similar to the red below it, but there are no perfect options when you need this many colors.
Le Havre has no excuse. They just needed to add a gray, white, or black player.
Solution Four: Color Saturation
When I started this article, I planned to call out Lost Ruins of Arnak. Turns out, I was wrong. You can see the red and green player colors here:
This red vs. green contrast didn’t work in Le Havre. On the other hand, Czech Game Edition seems to know what they’re doing.
Green Blind:
I’d still prefer a white, black, or gray player for maximum contrast, but this shows the power of saturation.
Solution Five: Use Translucent Pieces That Blend into the Background and are Therefore Hard to Tell Apart Even if you aren’t Colorblind
That’s true equality.
I'm not color blind but have low vision. It's so hard to explain what I can't see.
You are so droll! I love little asides like this: “I know what you’re thinking. We can’t remove the purple camel because it adds so much realism to the game. That argument, however, fails to account for the fact that the world was in black-and-white back then.”
Ever since learning about colorblindness in elementary school, I have wondered why traffic lights are red and green. It does seem as though many accommodations for colorblindness would be easier to implement than changing all the traffic lights--your suggestions for board games are good examples.
A final thought: I wonder whether there isn’t a TikTok trend of pretending to be colorblind because colorblindness afflicts almost exclusively boys and men, while those suffering from imaginary conditions spread by TikTok are mostly girls and women?