World of Warcraft to get Colorblind Accessibility Support

Everyone’s favorite MMORPG (well, my favorite, anyway) World of Warcraft is set to receive new accessibility functions that cater to colorblind players. 

Colorblindness is a lot more common than most people think. It’s about time World of Warcraft, the biggest MMORPG on the market that caters to both casual and hardcore gamers alike, received accessibility features that cater to those with colorblindness. 

The options will allow players to tell apart friend from foe, convey information about item types, and danger levels. 

According to a blue post on battle.net, Blizzard intends to implement three sets of filters designed to assist players with various forms of protanopia, deuteranopia, and tritanopia.

“Each set of color adjustments is available via a handy dropdown selector, and each comes with a ‘strength’ slider. The farther to the right you set the slider, the more the game removes potentially problematic wavelengths of color for each type,” Blizzard said.

“For example, when you move your mouse cursor over a piece of rare gear and then a piece of epic gear, the game colors the names of the items blue and then purple, respectively. With ‘UI Colorblind Mode’ enabled, the game will add the words ‘Rare’ and ‘Epic’ to the tooltips for those items,” Blizzard said.

“For players who find it difficult to discern between friendly, neutral, or hostile targets, additional indication text in the tooltip will now appear when you move your mouse cursor over other characters.”

Expect it soon.