The BBC had an interesting article back in April about the difficulties experienced by color blind people while playing computer games (I know, I know, #firstworldproblems).
The inability to easily distinguish between certain colours is a problem that affects about one in 20 men, and one in 200 women.
For video gamers, it can mean some parts of games become vastly more difficult – such as when opposing teams are distinguished by the colours red and green, or if other crucial on-screen indicators feature similar shades.
Despite the large numbers of gamers affected, awareness among the development community is comparatively low. Only a handful of publishers make concerted efforts to cater to people with this genetic condition.
The article mentions red/blue color blindness, but I experience this issue a lot with red/green/yellow, especially when the objects in question are smaller. For example, I’ve seen puzzles where the object is to throw red, green, yellow switches in a specific order, and typically I’ll have to have my wife or kid tell me which is which.
And while I would like to avoid those problems, there are many areas in my daily life where the red/green issues becomes a problem, especially in electronics — the worst are devices with a single LED that flash green if the device is working properly and red if the device isn’t working properly. Again, I always need another person to help me out with those.
The BBC article goes on to discuss a wide variety of games and how different companies approach this, but accessibility in general needs to be taken into account more in designing computer and game systems. I suspect, for example, that my red/green color blindness puts me at a much less disadvantage than a gamer who is deaf. And, of course, those who are blind or have low vision are pretty much ignored by the video game industry and all to often by those outside it as well.