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In the UK, colour blindness can be considered a disability under the Equality Act 2010 and it is incumbent on all areas of society, including the sporting world, to do what they can to reduce the difficulties faced by colour blind people.

At Colour Blind Awareness our mission is to raise awareness of colour blindness and work with third parties to improve their services, workplace and social environments to make them more accessible. The best results come from a holistic approach, based on a coherent integration of a few simple solutions.

Solutions can be simple!

On the whole solutions for accommodating people with colour blindness are simple, common sense and inexpensive.

We work with sporting organisations of all sizes. We understand that addressing colour blindness challenges across your organisation might initially seem to be daunting if this is a new topic to your club or organisation, but we can  work with you, pointing you to existing resources to allow you to decide exactly what’s needed and how change can be delivered at a pace that suits you.

Services we offer

The services we offer are wide-ranging and can be tailored to suit your needs. Our most popular services are

  • Creation of guidance documents for governing bodies, including factsheets for specific topics/roles
  • Stadium audits – to benchmark existing facilities and advise on how facilities can be improved
  • Creating and delivering training sessions on a wide range of topics for governing bodies, manufacturers, designers, broadcasters, clubs, coaches, venue operators etc.
  • Player screening and support

Our clients include

  • Formal guidance – The Council of Europe Pro S4+ Committee, The Football Association, UEFA, World Rugby, The Premier League and others, with guidance for other sports currently in the pipeline.
  • Training – National Associations, clubs, coaching bodies and management, to provide training to support staff across different roles e.g. FIFA, The Football Association of Wales, Aston Villa, Tottenham Hotspur and many others
  • Advice on facilities/stadium operations – Governing bodies, venue operators e.g. Wembley stadium, clubs, designers and architects to develop effective wayfinding strategies and accessible digital information and to advise on specific topics such as design of accreditation passes, accessible ticketing platform design, effective merchandising etc.
  • Player screening and support – National associations and clubs, including elite coach training – such as pre-season 22/23 player screening and coach training sessions at Swansea City FC .

We also:

  • Raise awareness amongst external stakeholders e.g. broadcasters such as Sky Sports, and equipment suppliers including Macron and Molten
  • Work with third parties across to provide effective solutions e.g manufacturers associations

As a result

We help to create

  • Fully accessible stadia, websites, ticketing and corporate information
  • Fully inclusive participation for players and spectators
  • Opportunities to exploit the business case (sponsors/broadcasting rights/ticket sales)

Contact us

If you would like our help we would love to hear from you. Please contact our CEO Kathryn Albany-Ward via [email protected] 

Please note that unfortunately, due to the amount of money sport attracts and the high profile our work has gained recently in the media, some less scrupulous organisations are attempting to sell potential solutions to clubs and other organisations which are not satisfactory and do not resolve issue for colour blind people. Some even link to our website from their own, implying we support their products when we do not.

We pride ourselves on the fact that we will only provide independent advice and do not have financial links to any products or companies offering potential solutions. Therefore, if you ask for our advice, you can be confident that if we suggest potential solutions we will not gain financially from these.

We specifically do not endorse any tools from any organisation which can allow users to change the colour scheme of a website e.g. for a club website, because changing the colour scheme cannot be guaranteed to resolve problems for colour blind people.

Ongoing Commitment

It’s important to review regularly the measures and guidelines you put in place to assist colour blind people and to ensure they are implemented in all areas as part of any overall upgrades e.g. to wayfinding information, stewards’ training packs and so on.

Case study

One example of positive change we were able to influence was when we approached Sunset and Vine, the production company responsible for Cricket on 5, to let them know their wagon wheel graphics were inaccessible for many colour blind people.

The positive attitude of the production team resulted in subtle changes (such as increasing contrast between foreground and background colours) which allowed colour blind viewers to understand the information more easily, with no adverse effect for other viewers.

We feel it is very important that all our viewers get the ultimate enjoyment from our programme so we will do what we can to ensure that we make the necessary changes if possible.

Dylan Jane, Executive Producer, Cricket on Five, Sunset+Vine Productions

Since then we have been able to influence change in many areas of sport. If you would like to know more about how we can help your organisation please contact us at [email protected] and see a brief summary of our involvement in different areas of sport Colour Blind Awareness in Sport 2022

 

Find out more about the diagnosis of colour blindness
Find out more about the causes of colour blindness
Find out more about the different types of colour blindness