People with color blindness experience varying degrees of difficulty in distinguishing or identifying certain colors. Gamers affected by color blindness often need to rely on specific accessibility features to fully enjoy the screen experience. However, Ubisoft's latest release could significantly improve their gaming experience - not just in one game, but across a wider range of games.
Ubisoft recently launched Chroma, an open source tool designed to simulate various forms of color blindness. According to the French games publisher, approximately 300 million people worldwide have color vision impairment, many of whom are gamers who spend a lot of time interacting with colorful digital environments.
With Chroma, developers can simulate the three main types of color blindness: protanopia, deuteranopia, and tritanopia. Ubisoft is already using the tool internally on multiple game projects to support its accessibility teams in complex testing scenarios. It’s worth mentioning that Chroma is designed to work across all games and is not tied to a specific game engine or platform.
The tool has many additional features such as accurate visual simulation and real-time rendering up to 60 FPS. While 60 FPS may not qualify as "high performance" by modern gaming standards, it represents a reasonable trade-off when considering accessibility - especially if the alternative is an inaccurate or incomplete visual experience. Additionally, this frame rate may also be applied to simulation tools only during development and will not affect the performance of the final game version.
Chroma also offers real-time gameplay recording, screenshots, a configurable user interface, and more. Ubisoft explains that the tool simulates color blindness by applying filters to game graphics. Developed by Ubisoft India's quality control team in 2021, Chroma uses the Color Oracle algorithm and supports both single- and dual-screen setups. It provides multiple shortcut keys and a customizable overlay to simplify testing.
According to Jawad Shakil, Quality Control Product Manager at Ubisoft, Chroma was designed to incorporate color blind accessibility into the creation and testing process from the earliest stages of game development. The quality control team put a lot of effort into ensuring the tool eliminates delays and minimizes visual errors.
Ubisoft is now releasing Chroma under an open source license, giving other developers new options to enhance the accessibility of their games.