Factorio Forums

TL;DR

The red (circuit network) wire is going to cause "ambiguous UI" issues as well as being an accessibility problem alongide the green wire. Its colour should be changed.

What ?

OK, so, hear me out on this one:

• red/green colour vision disorder is the most common type of CVD, so using red and green here is something of an accessiblity problem
• the upcoming 2.0 changes to the combinator UI that will show the input signals from the red/green circuit networks is going to make the red signal UI ambiguous: the red signals are getting the same red background highlight as logistics requests which cannot be satisfied because there aren't sufficient items in the network

Why ?

Improved accessibility for people with CVD is just generally a good thing to do. For players without CVD though, I know that I'm going to balk whenever I see a red highlight on a circuit signal background just because intuitively my mind snaps to "that means there's a problem"; I doubt I'm alone here. Making it blue instead of red will eliminate the UI ambiguity and improve accessibility.

There is a long lasting demand for better colour blind friendliness in Factorio : viewtopic.php?f=80&t=22760
As someone who doesn't have such issues, I can only sympathise. Some time ago, one of the devs told they were thinking about ways to solve this issue, and luckily, that same dev has some form of colour perception deficiency (not luckily for him, but for all the colourblind players) : one needs a colourblind to tell what works and what doesn't.

Koub wrote: Sun Nov 12, 2023 11:03 am one needs a colourblind to tell what works and what doesn't.

There are graphics filters that simulate it.

(There's been some speculation that Factorio's colour-blind mode is actually using these, instead of filters to help colour-blind people)