The O-Store is considered stocking O-flags with a blue stripe down the diagonal. There have been some requests for this, and we hear it is much better for colour-blind orienteers than the regular flags. We have checked with the IOF and it would be within the regulations. In US rules it is explicitly mentioned as being allowed. We are looking for feedback (here or to anne@o-store.ca) from the orienteering community. Pros and cons to the blue stripe, anyone? Thanks in advance for your thoughts!
The combination of red/white with blue stripe was tested and used in Sweden in the 1970ies. After more testing they must have found out (I suppose) that using only the orange colour (instead of red) was good enough for the colour blind. There are several kinds of colour blindness though and this may not cover all bases?
I can see that in forests with a lot of orange leaves the present O-flags may not be the ideal solution...
I'm colorblind (protanopia, not the most common type), and I like the blue stripes. I'm not aware of any downside to them.
There is an old thread that mentions flags with blue:
http://www.attackpoint.org/discussionthread.jsp/me...
Can you maybe post a photo of the flags with the blue stripe (also a colour blind person here)?
There is a
photo here and several more in this album (go back a few photos for ones against a wooded background).
This one shows bags with two different styles of diagonal blue stripe. I've also seen bags with a darker blue vertical stripe midway on each side of the bag.
I have never heard of a down side.; or any complaints against them. Our club has a mix and we just use them all randomly. I don't think I consciously notice during a race which type it is.
I'm partially color blind and the blue stripe doesn't seem to make a big difference to me EXCEPT in the fall when the leaves turn. Than it makes a huge difference.
Western Australia used to use (a long time ago) red and white flags with a blue stripe. We switched to orange and white mass produced flags for a major event that we were hosting.
My dad is colour blind and I know he found that switching to orange and white made essentially no difference over a plain red and white flag - ie it's about as easy to find as looking for a grey and white or brown and white flag for the rest of the population.
As for the stripe - I can't remember whether he found that terribly useful either, but he could at least see blue. I'll have to ask.
I'm with upnorthguy though - I can't see how it could possibly be bad for anyone. Maybe ineffective, but it couldn't make anything worse (just potentially more expensive?)
My club uses blue stripe bags for almost all events. When I go to neighbor club events or national meets that don't use blue stripe bags, I more frequently find myself passing near a control before I see it, and saying "how did I miss that"?
Now that is purely an anecdotal impression, and in some cases, their bags are also more faded (On most of my club;s, the orange is still pretty bright), but overall I have to say I prefer the blue. In general, it has a greater contrast than orange with any naturally occurring colors in the forest.
I've seen a few colorblind people write that blue is better, which is good enough for me.
But I prefer it myself as well. It's just a better flag, especially in the fall colors and winter browns when the orange and white are essentially camouflage.
You should be looking for the feature, not the flag.
I used to use blue/white -- or even red/white -- striped streamer tape.
Don't know if it even exists anymore...
But once you find the feature tRicky, you need to find the flag
You only need to find the SI brick.
Is that why some
SI bricks are blue ;)
In case you missed it—
The IOF Map Commission asks for feedback on colour deficiency issues:
http://orienteering.org/the-iof-map-commission-que...
@ tRicky, true. Even worthy of a pithy +1!
But seeing the flag helps when it is on an area feature (reentrant, clearing), not placed exactly where you'd expect it (southeast corner when the map said southwest).
I have distinct memories of having gotten to a feature (e.g. a saddle) and spent several minutes unsuccessfully looking for the flag before deciding that it was missing, then being sent out to retrieve controls and finding that it was there after all. Also, a large part of why I have no interest in Trail-O is that, on the occasions when I have tried it, I've found myself faced with, say, a problem that has five flags, and I look out from the viewing station and can see only three. I know which one is right, but since I can see them all, I don't know whether it's A, B, C, D, or E. Blue stripe helps (in my case). I've been encouraging its use since I first heard of the idea back in the mid 1980s. Controls used to be red/white, but were changed to orange/white around the time I started orienteering, purportedly to help colorblind competitors. My particular form of colorblindness is a red-deficient type, but orange isn't actually much better than red in this context.
I like the blue stripe.
I also like the ones that say "Event in progress, do not remove" in the blue stripe, just in case someone else finds one and considers removing it. I don't like the ones that have the vendor name in the stripe. I think it looks tacky, and it may be counterproductive (eg: park official sees one and thinks the vendor is involved in its placement).
A lot of flags have a brand name (e.g. Silva) on them, though usually somewhat smaller than a brand on the stripe. I guess "Go Orienteering" would probably have been less tacky than "Go Orienteering, Inc.", in terms of the impression it would give to a park official. Just "Orienteering" would, I'd think, be fine, right?
Surely it would be better if it said Navigation Race! Or was that another thread somewhere?
I'm not colorblind, but I have the impression that orange doesn't jump out at me as something special the way it does for some people, particularly if it is an old flag and both orange and white are faded. I have strong memories of an A-meet starting at the Kent School where the first control on my course was a charcoal platform, a nice, small, well-defined point feature. And when I arrived there, no flag. Fortunately on my third attempt at relocation from different attack points, always dumping me back at the same place, I was lucky enough to have someone run up and punch at the bag hanging from a maple with brilliant foliage at the edge of the charcoal platform. That was definitely one time when a contrasting blue stripe would have helped me out. But in general, I'm one of those people that doesn't do well with the Where's Waldo type of puzzles.
I wonder if it is possible to pick several colors that would cover a large percentage of the colorblind population and to see if those colors could be used to create a flag. It's sort of begging the question why something color-neutral like brilliant white or high-contrast like a black-and-white checkerboard hasn't been researched. (I'm assuming it hasn't.) {Edit: I wonder how good rainbow flags would be?}
I dare say black and white blends into the background, kind of like why you never see penguins in the bush.
Black and white checkerboard from a (long) distance will look gray.
If you can see it from a distance, it is not hidden well enough.
This discussion thread is closed.