Inaccessibility Is Still Leaving Some Color Blind Gamers in the Dark

There’s an Imposter among us.

Perhaps they’re red, or maybe blue, or green, or yellow, or orange.

For color blind gamers, the color-dependent nature of many games has made them inaccessible. Being a color blind gamer, though, isn’t one collective experience—something shown by reactions to Among Us, which recently updated its interface with a color blind mode.

Anyone with a TikTok or Twitter account has surely seen countless references to the game, which has taken the world by storm. It borrows from the schoolyard role-playing game Mafia, with the goal of finding the Imposter, whose mission is to ambush the rest of the players.

Gamers of all kinds are prone to the addictive nature of the gameplay, and even before the update, that included members of the color blind population. (Roughly eight percent of men and .5 percent of women are color blind, a low percentage that doesn’t put much pressure on the industry to make games more inclusive for color-impaired folks.)

“I've played plenty of stressful online games, but few where at any moment things could fly off the rails and folks will launch spirited accusations or defenses,” said John Trupin, a baseball writer who is color blind. “Seeing folks I know and folks I don't put together exceptional lies—or flounder spectacularly—is endlessly entertaining.”

“Every game is different, and so the first step for any game developer is to understand how color works in their game,” said Creative Assembly developer Douglas Pennant, who is color blind. “There are a number of common, obvious uses such as puzzles, team-colors, UI status… but it’s also necessary to understand how your colors lay over each other, how characters lay over the environment, how auras lay over screens.”

Despite each user having a chosen nickname, most of the dialogue in discussions to pin down an Imposter in Among Us will reference color. “Red is sus," for instance, goes the popular meme, with many players arguing red gets voted off the most due to some meme-influenced prejudice.

For those who don’t see color quite as clearly, this sort of thing can become taxing, or at the least frustrating.

Some games, such as Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, Fortnite, DOOM, and Overwatch have full-screen color blind modes that allow color blind players equitable access.

That’s a bit more difficult in a game like Among Us, where color is a factor not only in the gameplay, but in the dialogue as well.

“I do find that during the emergency meetings and discussions on the guilty parties that it can be a little tough for me to engage or know who people think is the Imposter,” said AJ Keirans, a color blind player whose family has fallen in love with Among Us. Keirans faces a distinct disadvantage with the way the gameplay is set up. While he might see the Imposter and report back to his crewmates, color uncertainty plagues the experience.

InnerSloth, the developers of Among Us, canceled Among Us 2 to focus on fixing issues with the current game, including creating the color blind mode, which they dropped recently among a flurry of other updates.

The in-game chat feature revolving around the color of the avatars, though, is something the color blind mode hasn’t yet fixed, which can be confusing for people who struggle to differentiate red and green and brown and orange. InnerSloth focused instead on issues with one of the main tasks in the game, involving putting together wires and matching them based off their color. There are now shapes to the wires to match as well.

“This is something that I have come to realize more in recent months, that the games that I enjoy are ones where the colors don't impact the user experience as much as others,” said Keirans. “I usually don't realize how it will impact me until I have played the game a bit as different games treat it differently.”

Keirans said playing Fortnite and Call of Duty hasn’t had the same anxiety, because of their color blind modes.

The color aspect of Among Us has discouraged some color blind people from even giving the game a chance.

Twitch streamer Bret Gillan is, well, Among them.

“It's one thing to have a single-player game impacted by my color blindness,” he said. “But in games where other people are relying on me and might potentially rage at me if I make mistakes because of my color blindness, I get extremely apprehensive.”

Gaming has never been particularly accessible for visually impaired people, but the color element is an easily avoidable mishap, according to Pennant.

Keirans said he prefers to be the Imposter because there’s less pressure trying to figure out who might be “sus,” and when he’s the crewmate, he gets accused often because his behavior sorting the game while color blind is different than his team members.

It’s an experience that seemed too daunting for Gilan, who would have downloaded Among Us if not for warnings from friends he might find it frustrating to navigate.

“For my particular type of color blindness the solutions are pretty easy, which is to either give anything that I would otherwise need to be identified by color a distinct shape or other means of identification, or to add a toggle so that the colors are switched to be other colors that I can more easily identify,” he said. ”I think it just needs to be something that's considered earlier in the development process, as I sometimes see color blindness 'accessibility options' that don't do anything meaningful at all for me, and were obviously slapped together after the game was mostly done. Usually they just add a weird color filter to everything, which I've never found helpful.”

One option for color blind gamers is gaming lens. That still leaves room for Among Us to be confusing, with the dialogue centering color. 

There isn’t much public outcry to make gaming more accessible for color blind players. Frustration is a solid reason to quit a game, and it’s a decision color blind gamers have to face every time they pick up a new one.

“Usually I'll try anything at least once, but there are just a ton of games where distinguishing specks of color out of a background is a vital mechanic,” said Trupin. “I'm not saying I'd be great at battle royale games or League of Legends if I weren't color blind, but I bounce off shooters and other real time, quick-twitch games almost immediately now unless there's a color blindness option.”

Color blind gamers often go without if there isn’t a blatant attempt to make games accessible for them, but it’s a demographic often left unexplored. Color blind modes aren’t the norm, something color blind developers like Pennant are speaking up for.

“Without color blind support, many team-based games are completely inaccessible,” said Pennant. “This is particularly bad if the game is fast-paced. If it’s a slow game I can often use context and understanding to figure out what the action is, but if things are fast there is no time. Color is such a fast-working form of information, which is why is it so commonly used.”

Among Us adding a color blind mode—even an imperfect one—has opened the viral game up to many more players who previously thought they didn’t have a space in that world. Perhaps it’s the start of a larger trend in not only adding more color blind modes to gaming, but in creating a more accessible environment overall.

“I’d taken one look at Among Us and accepted that it was a game I wouldn’t be able to play,” said Pennant. “When sometimes you only catch a glimpse of someone before they jump down a ventilation shaft all you have is the color to go on, and there are far too many for me to distinguish.” What did the color blind mode mean for him?

“I might,” he said, “finally be able to join in.”