Microsoft is now patenting a comprehensive colour correction feature that would compensate for various types of colour blindness on the fly.
While it’s not quite as disruptive as a number of other kinds of bodily deficiencies, colour blindness can be a major problem for gamers depending on its severity. Colour-coded level design, interactive objects, and HUD elements are all staples in gaming, and Microsoft may have found a way to make these features more apparent to colour-blind gamers.
Up until now, the specific implementations of colour blindness features depended entirely on game developers themselves, which would often mean limited or no support at all. Microsoft‘s latest patented system would instead offload this accessibility feature onto dedicated software and possibly work across the board in all or most games on the market.
Much like the recent split-screen multiplayer patent for Xbox, Microsoft’s colour correction patent was submitted a while back, though it was only made widely accessible to the public a few days ago. The patent describes a specialized colour correction technology that would compensate for colour blindness by applying a colour transformation layer to produce an appropriately altered image during the post-processing stage. This would, in theory, allow Xbox to offer solutions for virtually all types of colour blindness in one go and might not even need any input from the game developers at all.
The fact that Microsoft is working on a comprehensive colour-correction filter isn’t particularly surprising, considering the fact that Xbox keeps getting more accessibility options all the time. Microsoft has historically been quite dedicated to the idea of enabling and empowering every gamer. As colour blindness is a relatively widespread disability, it makes sense that the company would try to alleviate the condition with a patented software solution that could apply fixes and corrections on the fly.
A few years ago, Microsoft revealed its Xbox Adaptive Controller, which offered the single most adaptive and customizable gaming device on the market. The applied design philosophy was that it should allow most disabled gamers to optimize their playing experience with as little fuss as possible, removing many accessibility barriers that had previously been in place. The colour correction patent, then, seems like a logical extension of the same philosophy Microsoft has had for years.
While the colour correction patent is widely available for everyone to read up on, the company still has a few hidden tricks up its proverbial sleeve. Rumours suggest that Microsoft is trying to optimize the Xbox Series X chipset, which may result in a smaller, “slim” version of the console in the future. This is unconfirmed, however, and if true is unlikely to be revealed before the colour correction system is put into place.
