RaycastFilterType EnumItems are too visually similar for some developers to easily distinguish

As a Roblox developer, it is currently too hard to distinguish between RaycastFilterType.Exclude and .Include with dyslexia.

It was brought up recently that Include and Exclude are remarkably similar, which can be (and has been) detrimental to users with dyslexia or vision-related disabilities.
As the other aliases Whitelist and Blacklist are raising editor warnings, I think one solution could be to create new aliases such as AllowList or ForbidList.

If this issue is addressed, it would improve my development experience because developers with disabilities would not struggle to distinguish between the two.

3 Likes

As much as I root for accessibility because I believe in equitable opportunities, I firmly believe that design decisions should not revolve around making something accessible. That’s not to say that I think that people with disabilities should be treated as afterthoughts just because they have disabilities; it’s more that catering to the majority should be the top priority because that is where decisions have the greatest impact.

Perhaps a better proposal would be for more options in Roblox Studio to help better support people with dyslexia, whatever they may be.

With this in mind, I think Roblox should put some effort into making the script editor even more moddable, or adding extensive accessibility features themselves. For example, there exists a popular extension for Rider that colors every matching pair of parenthesis a different color to help with scanning and readability. I can imagine a plugin in a similar domain that colors every member of a class, or enum value, or somesuch a different color, using weight instead to communicate member versus function. Maybe we can have aliases for members, more information shown in intellisense such as equivalents, or tooltips with developer comments for certain members. There are many, many different ways this problem could be approached without changing API. Features like above along with features like this would be a huge boost to script editor accessibility.

Although, absolutely include and exclude are poor choices if dyslexia crosses your mind at all. It would be ideal if there was deliberate review for accessibility issues before approving API changes, or else more rigorous review.

4 Likes

Absolutely on board with the Colored Parenthesis, Please do a Feature Request on those.