Big, small, loose, and floppy threads of various colors, running parallel to each other horizontally.

Making a Palette with the Color Blindness Simulator

By John
Nov 19, 2023

There are colored threads in our upcoming game. I wanted each to look distinct to everyone, including players with a color deficiency. After some research on the world-wide-web, I felt like I could make it work.

I found explanations of the eye's rods and cones, types of vision deficiencies, related population statistics, and several pre-made color palettes. But I also found a research paper, Color Design for the Color Vision Impaired, showing color spectra seen through different types of vision, and that got me really curious to try something.

A table with rainbow spectrums, one per row, that differ with type of color vision deficiency. — From Color Design for the Color Vision Impaired

Within each spectrum I could spot unique bands of color. Where they overlap should give a set of colors visibly unique to almost any person.

I marked the color bands that I saw, and they lined up well in most cases. Orange and blue are a weaker match, but it seemed like a good starting point. It reminded me of a pre-made palette I had seen.

A similar table, but with rectangles around pieces of the spectrums that look like individual colors to me. Most of them roughly align from one spectrum to the next. — Where I see unique colors

To make a palette, I put the hues on squares and got fixated for hours adjusting saturation and lightness. For longer than I should have, it turned out.

Color swatches for magenta, purple, blue, cyan, green, yellow, orange, and red.

That's because my perception changed a lot when I put the colors on threads, and in low-light on my phone screen. It was a reminder that I'm no color expert. I needed threads distinct in all situations, so I made multiple thread shapes and tweaked colors again. This whole process took a couple weeks.

Big, small, loose, and floppy threads of various colors. — The threads we settled on (so far)

Along the way, I used a wonderful color blindness simulator web page called Coblis, and filters that Geri Borbás made from it. I could see my graphic work live through the Coblis filters¹.

Here are the threads with simulated low green reception, the most common color deficiency (they look nearly identical in low red, surprisingly).

The same threads, but purple looks dark blue; red looks warm brown; and green, cyan, magenta, orange, and yellow are faded. — Simulated low green reception

Actually, I'm adjusting colors again as I write this. We just got feedback from a friend with low-green reception. The filters aren't perfect, so it's great to have real feedback.

Here the threads are with green total-blindness simulated. It's good we have different shapes.

The same threads, but now green and orange are both the same warm tan color, and red is a darker shade of that same color. — Simulated green blindness

Low blue reception is rare but interesting for comparison.

The threads, but purple is almost gray, blue is aqua, green is mint-green, and orange is a peach color. — Simulated low blue reception

An interesting table based on Types of Color Blindness:

Type	Science Name	In Men	In Women
Low red	Protanomaly	1.08%	0.03%
Low green	Deuteranomaly	4.63%	0.36%
Low blue	Tritanomaly	0.0002%
No red	Protanopia	1.01%	0.02%
No green	Deuteranopia	1.27%	0.01%
No blue	Tritanopia	0.0001%
Monochrome	Achromatopsia	0.00003%

Whew, I'm so glad the threads are done! Please let me know if there's something important I missed.

Anyway, this somehow relates to a word game. I promise!

By putting the .cube files on LUT adjustment layers in Affinity Designer. ↩