Colourblind friendly maps

[derekmiddlemiss]

Hi, I'm new to TOR, and absolutely love it, but the maps both printed and PDF are a pain to use for colour blind people! Could you possibly release a PDF on the site with added hatching, say, to distinguish the properties of the different regions?

[derekmiddlemiss]

Hmm, I see this has been raised already. Has there been any response from Cubicle 7?

[Majestic]

I have no idea if this is possible or not, but my friend just showed me some glasses that he uses for the last couple of hours each night (to help his mind wind down from all the screen time). They look sort of red, but when you put them on everything looks yellow, and they filter out the blue light (much like many phones now have a blue-light filter).

I wonder if there are any glasses like these that could allow the color-blind to view products like these, being as they seem to filter out or change certain colors? Again, I have no idea if such a thing is possible.

[Rich H]

... my friend just showed me some glasses that he uses for the last couple of hours each night (to help his mind wind down from all the screen time).

Those sound like something I could do with. A lot.

[aramis]

I use an overlay, instead of the GM's maps. It carries the outlines of the regions, the TN and the hazard level. I did it by tracing the GM's map.

If you get a transparency sheet (perhaps the vinyl used for making furniture covers, perhaps overhead transparency sheets) the size of your map, and clip it down, then have a friend who isn't color-blind trace the regions... and then write in the correct Symbols and TN's.

If you have the PDF, I have a PDF of an overlay I did by electronically tracing the GM's map.

[atgxtg]

Would a greyscale image help? I could covert the maps over to greyscale if it would help.

[Hermes Serpent]

Anyone with the pdfs of the maps can print them to a printer or pdf and chose the greyscale option (if available on their printer) so probably wouldn't need to get someone else to convert them for them. Best bet is to do that and get a non-colourblind mate to confirm where various colours are and label the greyscale print by hand accordingly.

[atgxtg]

Yeah, but if you do it on the computer instead of at the printer, you can make adjustments, such as improving the contrast or replacing one shade of gray with another.
Hatching or other patterns are a bit more difficult, thanks to the hex grid. But I think if I change the default color of the hex grid I might be able to enhance the borders around the colored sections, which could help to make the regions easier to spot.

There are only a half dozen color used on the maps, so improve the contrast by replacing colors , either with high(er) contrast colors, higher contrast grays, or possibly some sort of pattern. But I couldn't really tell what works or not, and would need feedback from someone who is colorblind.

I know in grayscale the orange and green color is hard to differentiate, as are the brown and red color.

[derekmiddlemiss]

Sorry for the late reply! You are a very friendly and helpful bunch, thanks so much for all the replies above I think I'll follow the suggestion of tracing the regions and asking a friend with normal colour vision to mark on the classification! Hopefully, and if the developers don't mind, I'll post the PDF up here so others can make use of it!

[derekmiddlemiss]

(Oh, and have heard of these glasses - they were originally developed by laser safety engineers who wanted safety spectacles that screen only certain frequencies! Neat stuff. When I have more money...)