Wednesday, April 16th 2025
Ubisoft's Colorblind Simulation Tool, Chroma, Released to Public
Chroma, Ubisoft's colorblind simulation tool, is now available for public use after several years of internal use and development. With an estimated 300 million people around the world affected by colorblindness, Chroma allows developers to accurately replicate their experience and create accessible content to meet their needs. The open-source tool works by applying a filter over the game screen without hindering performance."Over the past few years, Chroma has proven to be a highly efficient tool for us at Ubisoft," says David Tisserand, Director of Accessibility. "It has allowed us to assess the accessibility of our games for colorblind players much faster and more comprehensively than ever before. Because we believe accessibility is a journey, not a race, we're thrilled to share Chroma with the entire industry. We invite everyone to benefit from it, provide feedback, and contribute to its future development."
Development on Chroma started in 2021 as Ubisoft's Quality Control team based in India worked to create a tool that would provide feedback in real time and allow developers to control the game while simulating color blindness. Today, Chroma uses the Color Oracle algorithm and can be used on dual or single screens; furthermore, it works with hotkeys and has a customizable overlay.
"Chroma was created with a clear purpose---making color blindness accessibility a natural part of the creative and testing process," says Jawad Shakil, QC Product Manager. "The team faced and overcame significant challenges while building it, but through close collaboration with accessibility experts and by refining the tool based on feedback, they created a solution that eliminated lag and inaccuracies, making accessibility testing efficient and smooth. Chroma is a testament to the team's innovation and dedication; their work is already making a difference in how we design games with accessibility in mind. Open-sourcing Chroma is a proud step forward, allowing everyone to benefit from this innovation."
You can check out Chroma here: github.com/ubisoft/UbiChroma
Source:
Ubisoft News
Development on Chroma started in 2021 as Ubisoft's Quality Control team based in India worked to create a tool that would provide feedback in real time and allow developers to control the game while simulating color blindness. Today, Chroma uses the Color Oracle algorithm and can be used on dual or single screens; furthermore, it works with hotkeys and has a customizable overlay.
14 Comments on Ubisoft's Colorblind Simulation Tool, Chroma, Released to Public
You should download the tool and play with it a bit.
So, human eye basically has RGB cones for colour, so if any of those vary too much one can have colour deficiency. If there were none or close to none of all RGB cones then it be black & white - colour blindness.
I have used the options in Grim Dawn and Borderlands 2 and I find it overkills things.........as in over saturated so I typically don't use the colour deficiency options - I find it did help a bit for weapon tier lasers on BL2 a bit though.
So on that both eyes can be different and people can have varying severity as well, just like general vision 20/20 system etc.
Most common is Deuteronomy – unable to perceive green wavelengths of light. - Again not true you would need a complete absence of green cones to not perceive it. I would say for example you have 90% instead of 100% green cones, so you're not going to be able to distinguish 100% of the green, but since RGB it basically means your colour vision is just out of calibration, and obviously the severity can have an affect on all colour perception and throw out their dE so to speak.
opto.ca/eye-health-library/colour-deficiency
www.nei.nih.gov/learn-about-eye-health/eye-conditions-and-diseases/color-blindness/types-color-vision-deficiency
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishihara_test
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_blindness
So what's this mean.......
For me the grass is green and pumpkins are orange etc. I basically have no problem seeing all colours and telling them apart high contrast anyway. Now if @W1zzard has line graphs that have thin lines in the colours below it can give me grief. Also now that I know this, I typically calibrate my monitor inline with TFT Centrals typical setup for RGB so I know the colours are true/calibrated to a standard instrument and not my eyes, however maybe I should try to over-saturate the green a bit until I can make out the Ishihara slides???
The issue comes up when you get to pastels, shades, transitions and less contrast, then they kind of blend together easier........think someone wearing camo in the forest. So for my type I find that light shades/pastels of pink/grey purple/blue red/green get harder to distinguish especially if under poor fluorescent lighting. Typically the Ishihara test or extended tests are done with sometimes over 100 slides under 95+cri or sunlight to determine the type and the severity of colour deficiency. It's also mainly men that are affected and probably a higher than estimated % due to lack of testing and severity.
I think this could be done very crudely and simply in games, like a graphics settings page, maybe select your type then have maybe a dozen Ishihara slides with the number under them and just have a colour slider so that could slightly adjust until see the "number" on the slide
Take a run though 100+ slides and see what you get. Some sites are good and can give type of colour deficiency and a rough severity.
Catches me off guard sometimes when I tell him to look for something of a certain color and the dude just can't see it.
Edit - to make life easier for deuteranopes I would say stick to primary and secondary colours on the outer band, dark full contrast as an example. Thanks!! Also black and grey works / easy to distinguish with those as well.