Re: [piecepack] Is the piecepack color-blind friendly.

[Ronald Hale-Evans <rwhe@...>]

On Sun, Sep 16, 2001 at 03:24:24PM -0000, rmundsc@... wrote:

> I have been showing the piecepack to people I know, and I have had
> two people tell me that they would not buy it because the are
> red/green colorblind and they can not tell the difference between
> the red and green pawns.  I am not color blind so this was an
> eye-opening (no pun intended) experience.

Perhaps your friends could put a rubber band around either the green
or red pawn, to distinguish it from the other.  That's simple enough.
I understand that 1 in 10 white males are colourblind to some degree,
and there is not enough awareness about this among gaming companies,
but I would hope your friends would not make a political issue about
this by not supporting the piecepack concept when a fix is so easy.

Alternatively, your friends could _make_ their own piecepacks; the PDF
files at piecepack.org contain both yellow and green versions of the
Crowns suit, and all pawns have suit symbols.
 
> I would like to recommend that the piecepack pawns be modified so
> that a piecepack is completely color-blind compatible just like a
> deck of cards.  I would think the easiest way to do this is to
> include the suit symbol on the pawns.  At the very least the
> elimination of Red or Green (Yellow is a better choice) as a color
> for one of the suits would be a good idea.

As I mentioned, this is already true for printable piecepacks.  But
I'm sure that eventually some manufacturer will do the same for their
pawns.  As with the question of directional/invertible pawns, I'm sure
the current spec will change to meet the needs of players.  Call it
"piecepack spec 1.0".

Incidentally, I just found out that Icehouse, which I had thought was
patented, is now also effectively in the public domain.  The patent
has expired.  I'll post some illuminating mail from the Icehouse list
after breakfast.

PAX et LVX,

Ron H-E

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