Traffic Lights

[Andy]

The new traffic light system on Awin is a great idea. I can fully understand the credit problems the network could have with certain merchants and it's good that Awin are informing affiliates before they put any hard work into a campaign. Any "Green" merchant is running at better payment terms than most other networks.

But this is a rant as well as a rave.

I am colour blind.
red/green, green/brown and blue/purple

Before anyone asks, no I do not see in black and white. It only affects certain shades of the colours mentioned above. Certain hues of Red/Green look identical etc

On the roads, I can clearly see the difference in colour between a red light and a green light.
On Awin, they are one and the very same.
Honestly, there is absolutely no difference to me whatsoever. I noticed this problem before with the transaction status lights and ignored it as I have someone else to worry about that for me. But I make the decisions on what merchants to run, so it's affecting me now.

Bearing in mind that colour blindness affects alot of Men to some extent (different sources quote anywhere between 1 in 20 and 1 in 5), with most not realising a deficiency, and you have the potential to put a fair few affiliates off joining a fair few merchants.

So I ask this: Would it be possible for the designers to alter the traffic light images please?

Please use as little shading as possible (this might be the main cause of the problem), just flat round lights would be great.

may I suggest these colours:
Red: #FF0000
Green: #00FF00

I realise that there is a text explanation on the merchant page, but in the merchant lists there isnt.

The colours used for the explanation on Awin/affiliates/ are "OK", but the green does look abit red/brown to me. I only know it's green because it says it is!

Cheers
:mad: <- Looks green, but I know he's red 'cos he's pist
:) <- definitely yellow
:D <- I think he's green

[GeorgeGaz]

Hi Andy,

Fair point made.
I am not sure why the alternate text is not coming up on rollover, I had to right click and view the image properties to find the alternate text which will distinguish between what the colour represents.

I have raised a ticket to make the guys aware of this and hopefully a change can be made.

Talking of traffic lights don't you just hate those cameras that catch you when you run a red :rolleyes:

[Andy]

Hi Andy,

Fair point made.
I am not sure why the alternate text is not coming up on rollover, I had to right click and view the image properties to find the alternate text which will distinguish between what the colour represents.

Its probably due to firefox:
(img src="red.gif" alt="red") will not show an alt in firefox but........
(img src="red.gif" alt="red" title="red") will show the alt (or in this case the title) in all browsers.

[GeorgeGaz]

Hi Andy,

Can you just confirm that you are getting the alt text now?

Cheers

[sourchocolate]

Talking of traffic lights don't you just hate those cameras that catch you when you run a red :rolleyes:

I have always wondered how colour blind people can drive cars since they can't recognize what traffic lights say? I do not know anyone who has it so couldn't ask :)

I'm guessing - although you can't see whether it's red or not, you can see which light is actually on and since the red is always above the green one it's easy to say. Is that the case?

Sorry, it's slightly off topic but I'm genuinely curious.

[Andy]

Alt tags confirmed George! Cheers matey, the system works!

These are common misconceptions sourchocolate.
Colourblind is really an incorrect term, it should be more like Certain-Shades-Of-Certain-Colours Deficient. "Colour Deficient" is the PC name for it

the problems lie more in the brightness of the colour rather than the colour itself. I can see a red traffic light is red because it looks red and I can see a green traffic light is green because it looks green. The colours used in the light filters are very different indeed, Bright Red and Bright Green.
Bright colours are no problem whatsoever.

But, even those with Monochromatic vision (everything is like watching a B+W TV) can tell the difference by knowing the position of the lights, like you mentioned.

I didnt know until I applied to be an apprentice electrician at 16. I passed the coloured wire tests (matching every standard colour of wires together, there were about 60, not just red,brown,balck and striped) and got half way through the Ishihara book before I couldnt see anything in the dots.

That put paid to that job and has affected every job search ever since.

Have a look here: http://colorvisiontesting.com/ishihara.htm
except for the Test Plate, I just see lots of little blobs.
Obviously online testing is not ideal, but it'll give an insight.

There are a few tools online that alter images to show you how colour deficiency affects things.
Check out: http://vischeck.com/vischeck/vischeckURL.php

There are positive side affects to colour deficiency too. Apparantly in tests done by the US Army, those with Deuteranopy (red/green) could see camoflaged soldiers whereas those with Normal vision couldnt. So come the day of the revolution, I'll be OK!