Discussion: Orienteering for Color Blind

I was sharing a recent O-map with my brother today, and was suprised that he couldn't see the first control circle. It was in the middle of a dark green area, and he's red-green color blind.
Obviously, not seeing the control circle is a huge disadvantage!!! This seems to be a situation that could really spoil a race.

He's also had trouble seeing control bags in the forest. Aparrently orange doesn't stand out against a green background, but he says the bags with a blue stripe can help.

Are any of you familiar with this issue? Do USOF or IOF have any guidelines to deal with colorblindness?

I expect the control circle was drawn in red. IOF standards are for the control circles, numbers, start, finish, and connecting lines to be printed in purple. This is much better for color blind people, although I'm sure there are extreme cases where even that doesn't help.

The orienteering control bags with the blue stripe between the orange and white were also designed to help color-blind people.

The color was actually what I would describe as magenta or pink. But color control is already a sticky issue with O-maps, so we have been brainstorming methods to prevent a disastorous O-trip.

Our current best idea is a green or red tinted baseplate. This could be quickly placed over a difficult region. The idea is to convert a variation in color to a variation in brightness. The system could be easily built at home by affixing some colored film to your compass.

I'll let people know how it works soon, after we conduct a "scientfic" test of my o-map collection.

Well, the CMYK value is 100% magenta, so I guess you could describe it as that. This corresponds to the PMS "Purple". I'm not sure why color is a sticking point on O-maps. The IOF specs are pretty clear. Calibrating a CMYK device to match the 7 PMS colors in the spec is not a particularly hard thing to do.

Magenta and Purple aren't the same. The ISOM is written, I believe, so that purple is preferred, especially for offset maps and courses, while magenta is allowed (and favored) for inkjet and other CMYK processes.

Alas, I can't see the purple ones, particularly if the lines are fine. Red, on the other hand, looks absolutely fine to me, and I'm always glad to get it.

A few comments/questions:

1. Purple course overprinting is supposed to be:
- purple, not magenta. To get this, add some cyan (at least 15%) to the "purple" in the OCAD color definition table: Symbols=>Colors)
- overprinted, so that control circles are darker when they overlap green or other colors than when they appear over white paper. To do this, print courses by having the course markings in their own file, with the map file opened as a template; select View=>Transparent map to simulate transparent purple ink. If it does not appear transparent/darker over green areas, then go to View=>Transparent map options, and make sure purple is not among the opaque colors.

2. I just worked with a color blind junior who is pretty new to orienteering, and it is clear that his colorblindness makes map reading more challenging than it is for people with normal color vision. I am interested to know how color blind orienteers deal with this problem.

3. I wonder if there are any color blind elite orienteers.

Don't know about elite orienteers, but I used to be able to name a number of US orienteers who are colorblind (I can recall only a few names off the top of my head right now). I personally found out that I'm red/green colorbliind when I was age 36. That explained a lot. Fortunately, the subtle details of my particular affliction appear to be not as quite as serious an orienteering handicap as other people I've spoken with.

Here in Cincinnati, we started using control flags with blue at most of our events, including our A-Meets. I have heard someone mention that it's better for colorblind competitors, and I assumed it was some IOF push. Looking at the photos of last year's Italy World Cup, I noticed the flags did not have any blue. I checked the IOF rules, and this is what the 2004 Competitition Rules say:

19.2 Each control shall be marked by a control flag consisting of three squares, about 30 cm x 30 cm, arranged in a triangular form. Each square shall be divided diagonally, one half being white and the other orange (PMS 165).

That's it. No mention of blue. I don't know what to think. Blegg's brother's statement about blue helping is the first time I've actually seen a verifiable statement that blue helps. (I know two people who are red-green colorblind---I will be asking one and showing the other both flags in the next week or so.)

I think it's funny that the standard wooden frames and sawhorses at big European events (At least what is seen in the photos---I've never been to one) are probably more visible than the flag.

If blue does help colorblind competitors, I definitely think IOF should make flags with blue an option, if not just outright require them.

To follow up the purple/magenta thing. Read the ISOM: Compare 3.5.1 with 3.5.2 and 3.5.3. For "alternative" processes like inkjet and laser, they recommend starting with the CMYK offset colors (which uses 100% magenta), and experimenting. I've tried the Condes standard "purple" color and 100% magenta on my inkjet (which was used for last year's Flying Pig Classic Blue and Red maps) and 100% magenta looks a lot better---purple obscures way too much below, even with transparent map settings. Those maps do have problems (contours too dark brown, and a bunch more), but they were a lot better than our standard laser process. I haven't heard any discussion of colorblindness with the 100% magenta.

If we're going to discuss the purple/magenta thing (outside of colorblindness), we should ask Bob Cooley of BAOC. He's done more experimentation with inkjet printing quality than anyone else I know.

To be clear about what I prefer based on what I've tried (I'm not colorblind):

1. Purple (CMYK inkjet) over an offset map: Good.
2. Magenta (CMYK inkjet) over an offset map: Better
3. Purple (CMYK) printed at the same time as the rest of a CMYK inkjet or laser map: Bad
4. Magenta (CMYK) printed at the same time as the rest of a CMYK inkjet or laser map: Good

Partial history of blue stripes on flags:
Olden days: controls were red and white
~25 years ago: controls changed to orange and white to help colorblind people
Around the same time: Dave Bailey suggests that blue stripes would help
Later: J-J repeats Dave's suggestion to some people
Still later: A club or two (GAOC?) experiments with blue stripes, and they become specifically allowed (but not required) by USOF rules.
A few years ago: Gale Teschendorf starts selling flags with blue stripes, which greatly increases the number in use in the USA. (Gale's marketing blurb about compliance with the "American Disability Act" (sic) is entirely specious, however.)
The possible future: controls with blue stripes appear at IOF events.

Yes, they do help.

I am not 100% sure, but I think I have heard that Sören Nymalm is color blind (red-green?). He is exceptionally good in night orienteering (is not just a typical top night runner, he is unbelieveable). Maybe he can see better in darkness than we mortals.

Blue stripes on controls definitely help me. I've had several instances of going right by a control multiple times and not seeing it (particularly with leaves out), but never with a blue stripe control. However, for course printing, lipstick red is my favorite! I've turned over many a map and searched for a while to find if there was a course on it at all when the course is printed in narrow purple lines. I think it's more of a matter of general visual acuity than color blindness.

There is a standard for the line thickness of the circles and lines that comprise a course. I think there's a problem that the selection of purple pens is somewhat limted, and sometimes people use fine-point ballpoints, which are wholly unsuitable, irrespective of the color. The 1992 Billygoat at Pound Ridge was an example of this, purple fine-point and extremely hard to decipher (and the pouring rain didn't help). I have found some purple felt-tip pens that work great, and naturally maps that have been laser- or inkjet- printed with the course in place are fine (as long as somebody hasn't screwed around with the dimensions and messed things up).

My father had the identical problem as blegg's brother. Even sitting down after the event, he couldn't see the red circles in light green areas. He found the control by extrapolating the lines from the previous and next controls to where they would intersect, and then looking for features in that vicinity. I've met several orienteering males (it's a sex-linked trait) and one orienteering female with red-green colorblindness.

As Charlie points out, red is often easier for color-sighted people to see, and purple for red-green colorblind people, so there's often a bit of a pull in either direction on the color wheel by different people.

I am colorblind and have been hampered by it at times. I haven't found the blue stripes extremely helpful but I have had a contact made for reading that has been tinted red. It makes a huge difference in showing me the difference between reds and green. The orange flags pop out of the background of leaves for me.

I keep it in my left eye and in my right eye is the non-tinted distance contact. It makes a huge difference to me but obviously not enough to make me an elite runner.

I found Night orienteering to be much less frustrating as the flags had flourescent tubes attached to them and my dependence on color was lessened.

Well, my brother and I looked over some maps today. Here are two things we decided:
1) The problem of not seeing a control circle is rare. Although he often had a more difficult time than me, he could see all the controls for 9 out of 10 maps.
2) The artifical overprinting effect seems to help by introducing a brightness contrast. (All of my maps were laser or inkjet printed)

We didn't manage to determine which colors work best, but there are several varieties of R/G color blindness anyway.

Although I see color normally, there are 2 types of colorblindness that run in my family, so I'm glad to hear your comments!

On another note, there are elite orienteers who are half-blind, no vision in one eye. Ruslan Gritcan is one, and he won some Ski-O JWOCs, a Ski-O WOC, and a MtbO WOC.

i suffer from chronic red green (and ocassionally shades of brown) colour blindness and agree enitirely that it is very difficult to see a red circle in a green backgound. Also in some cases i cant differentiate between a small green dot for a thicket and a brown dot for a knoll and so just end up running and ensuring i orienteer accurately. I accept that not many changes can be made to maps, however it is un-naturally difficult to run on a sprint map with this condition as i cant diffentiate between 'olive green' which is out of bounds and normal green which is ok. Are there any changes that could be used to change this, for example use purple hashed lines to mark out of bounds olive greens?

There was an interesting article covering colour blindness and sprint maps in the Australian Orienteer magazine a year or 2 back. My Dad is red-green colour blind, and used to have far fewer problems with old offset printed maps that he does now with the CMY colour printing out of OCAD. The stuff that gets added to the yellow to make it more orange and "less pale" basically makes dark green and solid yellow look the same

So basically open = brown
semi-open = light brown.
Forbidden access (olive) = light brown
garden / thick veg (green) = brown
paved area = light brown
buildings = grey

I can see why he gets frustrated. He often just runs and hopes and ends up with a bit of a detour when he finds the area he thought he could run through is in fact a garden bed.
He's controller for our relays on a sprint map this year and is busy redefining all the colours on the map so that he can see them better (and see if anyone else notices) Making the yellow pure yellow makes a massive difference.

As for seeing control flags, we (Western Australia) had a blue stripe many years ago, which I think he found somewhat helpful. Orange and white vs red and white basically makes no difference. He's never going to 'get lucky' and see a flag from a long way off or out of the corner of his eye...

Matthias Müller, Sprint World Champ 2010 is also red/green color blind. He wrote about it in 2008:

Article in German

Google Translation to English ("Gift" in the title means poinson and not a gift ;-))

He asks for the use of "dark green" (= 100% green, 50% black) instead of olive.

Thanks fletch. I'm partially color blind and have many of the same issues as your dad and try to compensate in the same ways. Whats more, I think there are quite a number of us out there.

I have wondered can the issue be emulated somehow by mixing red and green channels in photo editor. Something like this. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-tPXOqokW8ew/T5g...

(woc 2011 sprint Q, red and green channels mixed 50/50)

If it works it would make it easier for then non color bind to get some idea how color blind sees the map. Like scanning printout and mixing channels in photo editor and taking a look. And fine tuning tones to get some difference.

One related thing that I've encountered on laser-printed maps is that sometimes light green and light yellow are indistiguishable to me. (This is never the case with spot color offset printing, and some laser printed maps are okay, but some are screwed up.) It's frustrating to get to a rough open field, head off across it, and then upon cresting the high point in the middle to find out that the other half is actually slow vegetation.

I have wondered can the issue be emulated somehow by mixing red and green channels in photo editor. Something like this.

Is there something unusual about that map? Looks pretty normal to me...

Is there something unusual about that map? Looks pretty normal to me...

That is a seriously ugly looking map. New respect for the color blind who deal with this. My own color difficulty is less stark. I can barely see the purple that is sometimes used for course printing. I have often turned over a map and thought there was no course on it. Red shows up very clearly to me, and I am always delighted to see a course printed in red.

Can wearing colored glasses help with this sort of thing?

I know of a shooting sport where use of orange tinted glasses is purported to help participants see fast moving orange targets.

Here is the original:
http://www.woc2011.fr/images/WOClive/sprint_qualif...

If you were not joking and you don't see much difference between those maps, well, then the trick it sort of works. Would be difficult to run sprints with lots of tricky olive green.

Switching between the two, I can definitely see a difference, but it's more complicated than that. For one thing, the way a map looks on a screen is often very different from the way it looks when printed on paper. But to be honest, just looking at the screen versions, there are some things that I like better about the "ugly" map. For one thing, there's more of a difference between dark green and olive green on the ugly map. More importantly, there's more of a difference between the various types of green and the various types of yellow. On the real map, it's very difficult for me to see distinct trees in open land, but on the ugly map they stand out clearly. Unfortunately, small green dots look just like knolls on the ugly map.

I like the ugly map. I can actually differentiate the vegetation... And like jj states, this is on a screen which normally makes it impossible. I suspect if you printed the corrected map it might be overkill. Then again people with normal vision seem to be able to identify colours almost instantly so maybe the jarring contrast is necessary. I can't see olive green regularly so that's not a big deal.

In terms of colour blindness the worst map I ever experienced was Carcross Desert last year at the Canadian Champs. That was pretty frustrating.

I hadn't heard of wearing tinted glasses either. Worth a try if it makes a difference.

Green contact lenses?

You guys might be interested in this. It's the map bigE posted above run though this - http://www.vischeck.com/daltonize/runDaltonize.php - webpage. It takes red/green differences and twists them into blue/yellow differences - or 'daltonizes' them - pretty much what Jagge was getting at. Named after one of the first scientists to investigate colorblindness, I believe.

I can't speak to the accuracy of the simulated colorblindness, but the upper left image is the original, the upper right is simulated red/green colorblindness, the lower left is the 'daltonized' original, and the lower right is the daltonized one as (allegedly) seen with colorblindness.

bigE - how was the Fells map (that you crushed) at the 2011 SML Champs? Granted not much yellow to pick out amongst the green, but still pretty busy.

Making the yellow pure yellow makes a massive difference.

Your dad's suggested that to me before as well - the problem is that as you move towards pure yellow for open/rough-open land, it gets harder for normal-visioned people to see them because the colours get fainter relative to the white paper. This gets worse if the (digital) printing is slightly off. (Yetar Springs used to be notorious for this.)

I assume this is why open/rough-open are defined as orangeish colours rather than yellow.

You guys might be interested in this. It's the map bigE posted above run though this

A little terminology: There are four kinds of colorblindness: protanopia, deuteranopia, tritanopia, and monochrome vision. Monochrome vision is rare. Protanopia and deuteranopia are collectively know as "red/green colorblindness" in some countries. In other countries, colorblindness is called "Daltonism", which specifically refers to deuteranopia, the most common type by a wide margin.
Protanopia means you don't see red very well (not that common).
Deuteranopia means you don't see green very well (most common)
Tritanopia means you don't see blue very well (uncommon).

I have protanopia, or more accurately, protanomaly: I can see red, but it doesn't show up very well for me.

In that panel of four versions of the map, I'm not sure exactly what the four panels mean, since I would have thought that "Daltonized" and "Deuteranope simulation" would mean the same thing, but anyway...

The left and right panels of each pair don't look very different to me. Side by side I can see that there's a subtle difference, but if you just showed me one, I don't know that I'd be able to tell you which it is. Frtom top to bottom, the main difference is that the bottom images are much paler.

I guess ISSOM olive green was just inherited from ISOM without thinking much. But in general ISSOM forbidden/allowed is based on quite subtle line widths or color tone differences, this olive is just one of the issues. I honestly believe ISSOM is so poor standard it may be beyond fixing without complete re-thinking and re-writing.

In ISOM olive green doesn't matter that much, because it's not forbidden. If the area is forbidden there is purple stripes. Maybe a darker border around olive greens would make it easier to identify them.

Juffy - Aware of the problem re: pure yellow, but you can get a lot closer than we usually have (close enough for it to look yellow rather than brown) without affecting normal sighted people much. (As I did for the Mindarie Metro last December)

JJ - the website that generates that four panel map doesn't use 'Daltonize' synonymously with deuteranopia - a poor choice for a name on their part. They use it to refer to their process for turning an image's red-green differences that a deuteranope couldn't see into blue-yellow differences that they theoretically could.

If their simulation is any good, the side by side images should look the same to a deuteranope. I can't quite wrap my head around what an image simulated for a deuteranope would look to a protanope, but here's how they look, to me -

In the upper (unmodified) row, the left one looks like a typical o map, and the one on the upper right is a yellow/tan/blue one - and biggest difference i can see is that the small blobs of dark green don't stand out well, and light green's totally gone.

In the bottom (daltonized) row, the left one looks like a paler, pinker version of an o-map, and the right is again yellow/tan, but paler. The light green is still totally gone, but the patches of dark green are much more distinct.

That website's got a number of knobs to twiddle to play with the severity of their 'daltonization'. i just left it at the defaults, but maybe they're on to something - here's a cranked up version. now light green is definitely distinct on the lower right, but is it worth the overall lost of contrast?

This may sound weird, but now the lower left to me looks completely pink and undecipherable. In neither case does going from the upper left to the lower left make an improvement for me. I think I do slightly prefer the upper right to the upper left (green is more visible), but that's not really presented as an option.

I like the upper left a little better than the lower left, but the lower left is more readable, and almost as good. Lower right a little readable, upper right not something I would care to use.

I followed one of the mappers on the mapping commission on facebook. http://www.facebook.com/ollesmaps

He actually had a questionnaire about colour deficiency with regard to orienteering that I replied to. I had a really rough time in France, mainly because I wasn't able to see the difference between light green and rough open.

On some maps in South Africa they do not outline the olive green with a thin line of black on sprint maps. This means that I can see that there is olive green there, I am just not able to distinguish where the verge of the olive green is and where the open land begins. It's tricky to make some decisions. It is still better than ISOM maps though. I love urban sprint maps in comparison.

The person above contacted me and said that there is a move to make ISOM more friendly to colour deficient orienteers. This will be for the new revision of ISOM. ISSOM will only follow after this.

Something perhaps worth mentioning here is the supposed history of the color green. Traditionally (like, in the 1980s), the green on Swedish maps and the green on Norwegian maps was distinctly different, with the Swedish green being a cool, bluish green, and the Norwegian green being a warmer, yellowish green. I have maps from this era around somewhere, and I could scan them if people are interested in seeing the difference. What I've been told is that at some point the national mapping directors from those two countries were both colorblind, and each pushed for a shade of green that worked for himself.

It is possible to get a red contact lense made to perscription for the less dominant eye which improves colour vision. Im looking into these at the moment and testing with my normal lense in the right eye and a non-persciptiion lense in the left with the red, this allows me see distance and colour.. Maybe people may like to look into this, seems to work for me