My Splits Aren't Green
17 Jul 2017 16:29![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trysdynAwhile back I changed the colors I use in my speedrun timer. I kind of quickly glossed over how it was for accessibility and to let colorblind individuals be able to more easily tell the difference between splits. After witnessing and being involved in a discussion with some other speedrunners on the topic I thought I'd expand a bit.
=== Skippable background on what a speedrun timer is, what splits are, etc ===
Speedrunners use a specific type of timer to time their runs through games. This timer consists of an overall clock, and a list of checkpoints throughout the game that we use to check our progress against our personal best. These checkpoints are called splits. You can see a good example of such a timer at LiveSplit's site.
Each split represents a comparison point as you progress through the run. If you reach checkpoint A 5 seconds faster than you did in a prior run, you're considered to be 5 seconds ahead, or -5. Once you reach a certain level of familiarity with a run, you can use this to predict how well your run is going, and if it's worth continuing.
By default the speedrunning world uses a series of colors to represent the quality of the run at certain splits. These colors are Green, Red, and Gold to represent a good split, a bad split, and your best split ever. The precise colors here are taken straight from LiveSplit's default layout; if you're curious.
Green, red, and gold are so commonly used for these representations that they've become memetic within the community. Even if a runner changes their split colors, the best split they've ever had at a specific checkpoint in a run is still called a "gold split" by runners and fans. The concepts of green, red, and gold are deeply embedded in the speedrunning scene.
=== End background ===
The problem is the colors used by default in speedrun timers aren't very distinguishable for people with certain types of colorblindness. An alternate color set has been floating around the scene for awhile, most recently improved by HalfCoordinated. You can see a showcase of it on his Twitter here. This palette moves 'good' and 'bad' splits further apart on the spectrum to increase hue differentiation, and make it easier for a colorblind person to tell them apart. It also utilizes a feature of LiveSplit to make 'gold' splits appear in a transitioning rainbow.
I took this a step further and proposed adding this more accessible palette to the default layout list in LiveSplit. This was an operation I thought would manifest as a simple pull request to the project's GitHub page, but the developers chimed in with some ideas to even further expand the concept, and this is where the discussion started.
As I said, green, red, and gold is pretty deeply embedded in the community. So embedded, actually, that some people dislike the more accessible palette out of concern that it causes confusion for people who aren't "with it" enough to recognize what the new hues mean. Other criticisms include that colorblind people are used to it already, that colorblind people can use other data in the timer to differentiate (such as the actual split time), and that adding another feature to timers just for the sake of a small audience isn't worth the effort and code bloat.
I'm not here to argue by proxy with these objections, I merely list them to outline my next point: that these objections are exactly why I want the more accessible palette to grow in adoption. Arguably it's NOT a "big deal", colorblind people CAN use additional data to figure out what's going on, and it MAY cause confusion, but all of these concerns are transitional. For me this isn't only about suddenly breaking down a barrier that prevents colorblind people from getting involved in a good run (though it will help!); it's about bringing an issue to the forefront that most people don't think about.
When I changed my split colors to something close to HC's palette above, I got a lot of questions about why from people who had never considered the default was impossible for some people to differentiate. It sparked discussion and thought. This small change, which ultimately only made a small difference to 1 or 2 of my viewers, made 4 or 5 of them think more about accessibility for a moment. Maybe one of them walked away with the understanding that green/red is sub-optimal for accessibility, and will remember that the next time they design something.
It's just colors, and it's just redundant data that can be sussed out via other means if you can't differentiate the hues, and all my viewers understand how my splits work with or without colors, but it's something I have control over that could make more abled people think a little bit more about disability. I guess that's the big deal for me.
That's why I want to see it become the default for more streamers.
=== Skippable background on what a speedrun timer is, what splits are, etc ===
Speedrunners use a specific type of timer to time their runs through games. This timer consists of an overall clock, and a list of checkpoints throughout the game that we use to check our progress against our personal best. These checkpoints are called splits. You can see a good example of such a timer at LiveSplit's site.
Each split represents a comparison point as you progress through the run. If you reach checkpoint A 5 seconds faster than you did in a prior run, you're considered to be 5 seconds ahead, or -5. Once you reach a certain level of familiarity with a run, you can use this to predict how well your run is going, and if it's worth continuing.
By default the speedrunning world uses a series of colors to represent the quality of the run at certain splits. These colors are Green, Red, and Gold to represent a good split, a bad split, and your best split ever. The precise colors here are taken straight from LiveSplit's default layout; if you're curious.
Green, red, and gold are so commonly used for these representations that they've become memetic within the community. Even if a runner changes their split colors, the best split they've ever had at a specific checkpoint in a run is still called a "gold split" by runners and fans. The concepts of green, red, and gold are deeply embedded in the speedrunning scene.
=== End background ===
The problem is the colors used by default in speedrun timers aren't very distinguishable for people with certain types of colorblindness. An alternate color set has been floating around the scene for awhile, most recently improved by HalfCoordinated. You can see a showcase of it on his Twitter here. This palette moves 'good' and 'bad' splits further apart on the spectrum to increase hue differentiation, and make it easier for a colorblind person to tell them apart. It also utilizes a feature of LiveSplit to make 'gold' splits appear in a transitioning rainbow.
I took this a step further and proposed adding this more accessible palette to the default layout list in LiveSplit. This was an operation I thought would manifest as a simple pull request to the project's GitHub page, but the developers chimed in with some ideas to even further expand the concept, and this is where the discussion started.
As I said, green, red, and gold is pretty deeply embedded in the community. So embedded, actually, that some people dislike the more accessible palette out of concern that it causes confusion for people who aren't "with it" enough to recognize what the new hues mean. Other criticisms include that colorblind people are used to it already, that colorblind people can use other data in the timer to differentiate (such as the actual split time), and that adding another feature to timers just for the sake of a small audience isn't worth the effort and code bloat.
I'm not here to argue by proxy with these objections, I merely list them to outline my next point: that these objections are exactly why I want the more accessible palette to grow in adoption. Arguably it's NOT a "big deal", colorblind people CAN use additional data to figure out what's going on, and it MAY cause confusion, but all of these concerns are transitional. For me this isn't only about suddenly breaking down a barrier that prevents colorblind people from getting involved in a good run (though it will help!); it's about bringing an issue to the forefront that most people don't think about.
When I changed my split colors to something close to HC's palette above, I got a lot of questions about why from people who had never considered the default was impossible for some people to differentiate. It sparked discussion and thought. This small change, which ultimately only made a small difference to 1 or 2 of my viewers, made 4 or 5 of them think more about accessibility for a moment. Maybe one of them walked away with the understanding that green/red is sub-optimal for accessibility, and will remember that the next time they design something.
It's just colors, and it's just redundant data that can be sussed out via other means if you can't differentiate the hues, and all my viewers understand how my splits work with or without colors, but it's something I have control over that could make more abled people think a little bit more about disability. I guess that's the big deal for me.
That's why I want to see it become the default for more streamers.
