Ottawa LRT maps could confound the colour blind
Carys Mills, Ottawa Citizen
Published on: September 25, 2014, Last Updated: September 25, 2014 10:42 PM EDT
This images is a simulation showing what the proposed LRT map colours would look like to someone with the most
severe form of red-green colour blindness. The image was provided by the group Colour Blind Awareness.
Maps of the O-Train system will appear to most people as a red line running east-west, intersecting with a green north-south line, if the city continues with its colouring plans.
But to people with a common colour blindness, those hues will be hard to distinguish.
“If you have a choice, make a choice that’s more inclusive than exclusive,” says Ottawa resident John Olson, 70, who has a type of red-green colour vision deficiency, known commonly as colour blindness.
A tentative map, showing colours and numbers marking the two lines, was shown at transit commission last week and the colour combo has worried Olson and others pushing for accessibility.
Transit commissioners voted in favour of using “O-Train” to refer to the whole light-rail transit system, including the east-west line, which should be fully operational in 2018, as well as the existing north-south rail service already going by that name.
The existing O-Train line will be called Trillium, marked by green on the map, and the new one named Confederation, which was shown in red.
“In my case, it would certainly be clearer if they were more distinct different colours . . . such as yellow and (dark) blue or black,” Olson said.
Red-green is the most common type of colour blindness, according to U.K.-based group Colour Blind Awareness. The group estimates all kinds of colour blindness — involving light sensors in the retina and their sensitivity to the light spectrum — affect one in 12 men and one in 200 women.
“Red and green is a silly choice to start with,” said Kathryn Albany-Ward, founder of Colour Blind Awareness, adding that people with the red-green colour blindness also confuse colours that have red or green as part of the whole colour, such as blue and purple.
She referred to a European soccer game that created confusion earlier this month, because Liverpool was wearing red and Ludogorets green. Albany-Ward simulated what that would look like for someone with red-green colour blindness. The result, for people with regular vision, is all the players appearing to wear brownish uniforms.
“It depends on the specific shade of red and the specific shade of green, whether or not colour-blind people can tell the difference,” Albany-Ward said. “It could be a dark green or a bluey green, compared with an orangey red, and they would probably be able to tell it apart. But what normally happens in these situations is they choose colours that are the same tone and shade … so it looks nice aesthetically for people who see colour normally.”
Pat Scrimgeour, OC Transpo’s manager of transit planning, said the city is starting to look into whether the colour combination is a problem and if there are particular tones of red and green that would be easier for people to tell apart.
Line names and numbers will also be used on maps and the system as identifiers to help people find their way, he said.
The commission didn’t approve specific colours. But the Christmasy pair is a “leading candidate,” Scrimgeour said, partially because red is symbolically tied to Canadian confederation, and green matches the trillium flower.
“The bigger reason is that any of the other primary colours, or the other top six colours, are just less practical for our use,” he said. Red is tied to the Confederation line because it matches OC Transpo’s traditional colours and is symbolic. “Then the question is,” he said, “what do we use for the other line?”
Yellow can’t be reproduced nicely on a white background; orange and purple can be confused with red under certain lights and blue could be confused with Blueline Taxi, if someone says “Take the blue line,” Scrimgeour said.
“As far as we’ve found so far, it’s not recognized as a disability, so the law doesn’t give us any guidance,” he said.
But accessibility consultant Lesley MacDonald, who has worked on other Ontario transit systems, said the law is the bare minimum. Mississauga, for example, created an accessibility design handbook guiding the municipality to avoid red and green, as well as other difficult pairings.
The Toronto Transit Commission, MacDonald said, paid attention to colour blindness when it designed its map, with a black background and specific shades of colours that stand out, including an orangey yellow.
“To use red and green together, I wouldn’t do that,” MacDonald said.
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