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See the dedicated Sport section in the main menu for more detailed information on the challenges for people with CVD of watching and playing many sports.

Some team colours can be difficult to distinguish between, so if both teams play in colours of similar tones a colour blind spectator will have difficulty keeping up with the game, whilst a colour blind player might unwittingly pass the ball to the opposition.

The maroon/olive green reversible rugby shirt shown below used to be worn by boys at a school in Buckinghamshire.  The original idea for the shirt was that for games lessons students would be divided into two teams. One team would wear the maroon side whilst the other team would turn their shirts over and wear the green side. Unfortunately to some colour blind pupils both colours appear identical! The kits of many sports teams create similar problems, not just for players but also for spectators especially those watching football and rugby matches on TV. Plenty of examples on inaccessible matches can be seen from national e.g. Premier League and international football and rugby matches within our Sport section or by a quick scroll though our Twitter feed.

Sport - normal vision Sport - Deuteranopia

Normal Vision | Deuteranopia

Equipment

Equipment can also cause problems. Red cricket balls are difficult to pick out against a green background even if the player is standing almost on top of the ball and particularly in poor light. Some research has been undertaken which has proved this is to be the case. A particular problem has been created when the night/day ‘pink’ balls were introduced into Test cricket. See more details in the Sport section.

Normal Vision

Normal Vision

Deuteranopia

Deuteranopia

Other equipment such as red and orange training cones, orange hockey/golf balls can be impossible to see against green grass. Coloured buoys are hard to spot in yacht racing and snooker balls create problems too. Difficulties are experienced in many other sports too numerous to mention, but just think of canoeing as one example where a colour blind competitor would find it difficult to distinguish between the red and green gate markings which indicate which direction to pass through a gate.