habitica-android
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HabitRPG
+/- buttons aren't colorblind-friendly
I'm not colorblind myself, but I know someone who is and I know he would have a hard time 1) reading the +/- on the buttons (not enough contrast between text and background) and 2) differentiating between the two buttons (colors are too similar).
I know that Material Design has heavy color palette restrictions, but it should allow you to break the rules a bit for usability's sake, not to mention your users (including me) will appreciate it. :)
I had ideas for this, but haven't had time yet to test anything. Have you tested 1) with him or is this a speculation you have? The main problem is probably that one can't differentiate the tast value without the colors. The idea I think is the best would be to have a "colorblind" setting, that either turns up the contrast on the colors (which would probably make the option also usable/good for people who p.e. are red/green colorblind instead of completely colorblind) and then add "Good Habit" "Better Habit" "Worst Habit" etc. to the tasks. In the same line as the info about streaks for dailies. Ideally this setting would also be saved server side and also used on the website (where similar problems exist) and on the iOS app.
I did consult with him about this issue. I turned my screen brightness all the way up and asked him to describe it for me. He said that the text on the buttons was visible, but extremely faint, and that he could tell there were two buttons, but the contrast wasn't great enough.
I also asked him about the header that displays our character info, and he mentioned that the light purple on dark purple was hard to read and white would be a better color.
He did recommend, as you did, a potential "colorblind mode" so the devs can have their chosen color scheme and a scheme suitable for colorblind folks.
While we switched habits to have split buttons (so the + and - are not next to eachother anymore) I would still like a colorblind mode eventually so keeping this open even though the circumstances have slightly improved.
Hello, I am part of a group in a college software engineering course. Our purpose is to work on an open source project either working on bugs or developing new features. We wanted to check to see if a colorblind-friendly mode was still wanted and we could help in that way? Thank you!
@ilally93 Hi there! While we do still want a colorblind friendly UI, the fix for this isn't quite as easy as increasing contrast. Since we use a rainbow scale to indicate task value, and no amount of contrast will even help that translate correctly for a colorblind individual. We're a very small team, just one developer and one designer handling both apps, so we don't have the resources to overlook this and offer guidance and feedback right now.
However, if you'd still like to help I would recommend going through the repo and picking out issues with the 'Help Wanted' tag :) those are ones we marked because we think they would work well for outside contributors to help with.
Random comment from the peanut gallery as I look at Habitica Android's bugs... To make things harder, there are many different color blindnesses, though some people have came up with limited palettes that work for all IIUC. Looks like the Paul Tol's palette in this article (out of many articles on color blindness) would be reasonably Habitica friendly (and maybe modifiable successful to keep Habitica's trademark purple in it)? Or maybe the IBM one, who would look good for the task colors in any case IMO, can be extended to covet all the shades and have some Habitica purple too? The page is interesting in that it allows one to add colors to a palette and see what color blind people would see.
this is a really cool resource, thanks for the link! a color scale like this could be a good place to start in introducing a colorblind mode. ideally, id still want to pair this with some kind of icon or number system that would make our task health 'scale' more concrete to people who don't see red/yellow/green ect in the same way.