Visual Accessibility: Contrast, Text Size and Colorblind Options

Two different needs

Visual accessibility covers a range of sight differences, and two of the most common in games are low vision and color vision differences.

Low vision means that sight is reduced in a way that glasses do not fully correct. It can involve blurred vision, sensitivity to light, a missing area in the field of view, or difficulty with contrast. Players with low vision often need larger text, stronger contrast and less visual clutter.

Color vision differences, often called colorblindness, mean that certain colors are hard to tell apart. The most frequent type involves red and green, and others involve blue and yellow or, rarely, no color perception at all. A common figure is that red-green differences are more frequent in men than in women, but exact proportions vary by population, so this article does not give a number. The practical point is that in any audience, some players will confuse colors that a designer finds obvious.

Many other players benefit as well: someone playing on a handheld in sunlight, on a small phone screen, on an older television or after a long day. Good design for the two groups above makes a game easier for them all.

Contrast

Contrast is the difference in brightness between two things, such as text and its background, or an enemy and the scenery. Low contrast is a common cause of unreadable menus and missed objects.

Points to consider:

• Text against its background. Light text on a dark panel, or dark text on a light panel, is generally easier than text on a busy image. If text must sit over a scene, give it a solid or semi-opaque backing, or an outline.
• Important objects against the environment. Pickups, interactive objects and threats should stand out by brightness, not only by hue. A red object on a green field may have similar brightness, which makes it harder to distinguish for many players.
• User interface elements. Buttons, health bars and selection highlights need a clear state difference between selected and unselected.
• A high contrast mode. Many games offer an option that outlines key objects or recolors the interface for maximum separation. These are especially helpful for players with low vision.

Designers who plan color palettes and lighting for mood should check that a dark, atmospheric scene still lets players find what they need. A useful test is to view the game in grayscale: if you can no longer tell important things apart, color is doing too much of the work.

Text size and clarity

Small text is among the most common visual accessibility problems, particularly when a game is designed on a large monitor and played on a television across a room or on a small handheld.

Good practice includes:

• Adjustable text size, in menus, subtitles, tooltips and in-game notes. Offer genuinely large options, and make sure layouts still work at the maximum, with no clipped or overlapping text.
• A readable typeface, with clear letter shapes, enough spacing and reasonable weight. Thin decorative fonts are hard to read at small sizes.
• Enough space around text. Dense blocks are harder than short lines with room to breathe.
• Consistency. Keep the same size and style for the same kind of information.
• Scalable user interface overall, not just text. Icons, health bars and minimaps should scale too, which is part of wider interface usability.
• Screen reader or text-to-speech support for menus, where possible, for players who cannot read the screen at all. This requires planning, since menus built without it are hard to retrofit.

Colorblind options

A colorblind mode is a setting that changes the game’s colors to make them more distinguishable for particular types of color vision difference. Typical choices are labeled for red-green and blue-yellow types, and sometimes include a strength slider.

These modes help, but they are not a full solution. A few notes:

• They can only remap colors that the game controls. Some effects or textures may not change.
• Filters can make the picture look odd for others, and may reduce contrast in places, so they should be optional and previewable.
• Different people see differently. Even within a single type, severity varies, which is why sliders and customizable colors are better than one preset.
• The better fix is design. If a game never relies on color alone, a filter is just an extra aid.

Do not rely on color alone

The most important principle is to convey meaning in more than one way. Examples:

• Team colors can be paired with symbols or different shapes.
• A status effect can have an icon in addition to a color tint.
• Health bars can show a number or have a distinct pattern at low health.
• Puzzle pieces can differ by shape or pattern, not only color. This matters for fairness in puzzles, since a puzzle that depends on telling two similar colors apart is, for some players, unsolvable.
• Map markers and pings can be distinguishable by outline or icon.
• Red and green indicators for good and bad should also differ in shape, position or label.

Checking your own game

Developers can run several quick checks:

1. View screenshots in grayscale and see whether the key information survives.
2. Use color vision simulation tools in an image editor or engine, remembering that these are approximations and not a replacement for real players.
3. Increase text to its maximum and look for overflow.
4. Play on a small screen and a dim television.
5. Ask people with low vision or color vision differences to try the game and tell you where they struggle. This links back to the value of testing with the people who need the features.

Visual accessibility rewards simple habits: make important things bright enough to stand out, make text scalable, and say it twice, with color and with shape. Those habits cost little and widen the audience considerably.