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I'm pretty colour blind, including red-green amongst other colours. If I need to know a specific colour, I usually have to ask Mrs Vlad.
But what really irks me is the dumb implementation of "battery charge state" that seems to be proliferating. I'm specifically looking at SRAMs AXS battery charger as a really BAD example but they aren't the only ones.
Who can tell me what this colour indicates? (I have a colour blindness app on my phone to extract the colour values). Is "Green-Yellow" is supposed to mean 100% charged or partially charged?? And why not use an obvious Green LED (or even three different LEDs with clear markings). Definitely a UX fail in my book...
I've the same problem, especially with little LEDs.
I confess I’ve never thought of this. For me, in battery terms, Green is “charged”, orange is “charging”, and Red is “needs charged”.
Surely the instructions tell you what it means?
Surely the instructions tell you what it means?
From SRAMs user guide:
When the battery is properly installed in the charger, the amber LED indicates that it's charging. When it turns green, it's good to go. A full charge takes no more than an hour.
Tech tip: If you see a red LED on the charger, an error has occurred.
So, if you're colour blind, how the hell are you supposed to know the charge state?
Because your app told you the colour?
On a positive note you can always try out for the paralympic snooker team.
Not a niche problem at all. It impacts around 10% of males, including me.
I confess I’ve never thought of this. For me, in battery terms, Green is “charged”, orange is “charging”, and Red is “needs charged”.
do you understand what colour blindness is?
I had a colour blind rock climbing partner - we always had to agree before we started climbing what colours he saw the ropes as so when I shouted down more slack or take in, he didn't leave me exposed or drag me off the crag.
Because your app told you the colour?
You don’t get this do you? Can I spell it out to help you? If you are colour blind, you cannot see colour. Do you understand?
For more details, there are different levels of colour blindness, just like there are different levels of eyesight, but in *really simple terms*, a colour blind person will struggle with some colours to some degree.
That seems really badly thought out - does it not have the option to display a percentage of charge? or a bar like a phone battery?
I feel your pain, I spent my early twenties driving around in a purple fiesta that I thought was royal blue when I bought it 🤣.
Now there's a proper reason for me not to want AXS other than I'd probably forget to charge the batteries .
does it not have the option to display a percentage of charge? or a bar like a phone battery?
Nope - though if you connect it to certain Garmin computers, they have a battery charge indicator that doesn't rely on colour vision. But you can't connect them to the Garmin unless they are connected to the SRAM hardware (eg front or rear derailleur or dropper post)
Anyway, it's not just SRAM - just about anything which requires charging seems to use some ambiguous coloured light system
It may be little consolation to you, but even with “perfect” colour vision charging leds are a pita - blue, green, red, solid, flashing occasionally yellow or orange any of which can mean power on, charging, fully charge, error. If you don’t use the item regularly, knowing the colour is little help! Green LEDs can often be quite yellow like this, so then you have a question whether you are seeing green or yellow or possibly both. Switching been Green and red might seem logical if you ignore colour vision but even then green can mean currently charging (charger in a good state) or fully charged (battery in a good state) with red either meaning stop charging or battery not ready! Really you need some words beside the LED, but that does create language barriers and icons are not necessarily crystal clear for these sort of things.
Because your app told you the colour?
You don’t get this do you? Can I spell it out to help you? If you are colour blind, you cannot see colour. Do you understand?
For more details, there are different levels of colour blindness, just like there are different levels of eyesight, but in *really simple terms*, a colour blind person will struggle with some colours to some degree.
Let me spell it out for you, because you obviously don't get what you wrote.
Your op says. "I am colourblind, my app tells me its green, what does green mean?"
So take your ****ty attitude and shove it up your bum.
Instructions say it shouldn't take more than an hour to charge. Leave it for an hour you don't need to worry what the colours are.
But yeah a bar indicator would be better than a light.
I'm colour blind but find the little colour vision I have combined with differences in brightness mean I can distinguish different shades. I even managed to add a trailler wiring loom to a car last week and only had to ask Madame Edukator to confirm (or rather correct) one wire. So once you know the shade it looks charged and discharged you can use that. The yellow green looks a lighter shade to the orange to me.
This charger? If not, ignore everything below...
The LED nearest the lead lights up red. The middle amber/orange. The one furthest from the lead lights up green.
So it's charged when the middle light is off and the one furthest from the lead is green.
I feel your pain, I spent my early twenties driving around in a purple fiesta that I thought was royal blue when I bought it 🤣.
Now there's a proper reason for me not to want AXS other than I'd probably forget to charge the batteries .
I bought a pair of rather lovely brown Vans. That were green. Remember what highlighted my colour blindness when I was a kid in infant school when I was about 6 - coloured in a carrot with felt tip. The carrot was green and the leafy bit was orange 😀
I'll be honest, its affected me very little in adult life.
At least you have an app! I have Mrs ToRed to smell my shirts, alive could be worse 😂. Anosmic for five and a half years now.
About 20 years ago me and another bloke were testing an alerting system for a telecoms company, we were both colour blind and kept having to drag people in from the corridor to tell us what colour alerts we were looking at.
Sorry, I’d like to add to my post earlier (since some people were obviously unhappy with it). What I meant to say was “I’ve never thought about this, but it should have been obvious what a major issue this must be for a significant proportion of the population”. I made the incorrect assumption that people would not automatically assume I was being a totally unsympathetic plonker.
Also, I think I made a second wrong assumption that the OP’s device/app was telling him the colour in words also.
i wish I hadn’t responded at all. I intended to be sympathetic and tried to be helpful.
Because your app told you the colour?
I hope you're not a UX designer!
I wasn't trying to be wide. Your OP kinda just asked what green meant.
A single led sucks for everyone a bit more for you certainly. I still don't understand my drill charger. Sometimes it doesn't light up at all and yet it ends up fully charged.
We need those duracell strips on everything.
I think it is - that's where the "green-yellow" comes from. The problem for the OP is that he doesn't see the sort of lime green colour which the rest of us see in the box above the words. To a person with colour vision and the words green-yellow its quite obviously a sort "lime green" colour, more green than yellow. I think most of us seeing an LED that colour with the possibility that it is green/amber/red would conclude its the green one. We are used to seeing green LED's which are a bit yellowy, and amber LED's are usually more orangey and no hint of green. So whilst the electronics designer has missed a trick for <10% of its users, the app designer may have missed a bigger point for all its users - without seeing what colour the big square is a vague description may not be helpful. Ask a native english speaking 8 year old with good colour vision if this is green and I think the overwhelming response would be yes. The colour blind app could be better - probably designed by someone with good colour vision.Also, I think I made a second wrong assumption that the OP’s device/app was telling him the colour in words also.
green-yellow
If you're not certain whether something is green or yellow and the app you use to help you with this tells you that the colour is "green-yellow", it leaves you pretty much back where you started and suggests the colour they use could be clearer.
It might not help OP and his charger LEDs but you can set up android and iPhone screens to have a colour filter that can help with colourblindness. Maybe do that then point the camera at the LED?
Dunno about iPhone but on Android it's in Settings > Accessibility > Colour & Motion > Colour Correction
green-yellow
If you're not certain whether something is green or yellow and the app you use to help you with this tells you that the colour is "green-yellow", it leaves you pretty much back where you started and suggests the colour they use could be clearer.
Exactly my point!
The Google Play store write up of the colour blindness app said it used a API lookup of colour values to provide the colour name, which is obviously ambiguous for the purpose SRAM have chosen to us. I'm also confused by how the RGB values add up to more than 100%>
So I don't blame the app developer for that.
If they (SRAM) just used a LED which was 100% green, id almost certainly be able to figure it out but, no, they mixed in some red and blue values 🤷
green-yellow
If you're not certain whether something is green or yellow and the app you use to help you with this tells you that the colour is "green-yellow", it leaves you pretty much back where you started and suggests the colour they use could be clearer.
Exactly my point!
The Google Play store write up of the colour blindness app said it used a API lookup of colour values to provide the colour name, which is obviously ambiguous for the purpose SRAM have chosen to us. I'm also confused by how the RGB values add up to more than 100%>
So I don't blame the app developer for that.
If they (SRAM) just used a LED which was 100% green, id almost certainly be able to figure it out but, no, they mixed in some red and blue values 🤷
I did not read your op like that at all!.
I can answer your percentage comment thoigh.
Its percentage of each colour not percentage of the total.
100% on all is white light. 0% is black.
Quite hard to get and pretty expensive to get treu green, or red or blue LEDs
FWIW, the SRAM usb c (4 battery) charger is one light per battery, solid amber when charging, flashing green when charged.
Another sufferer here.
I've given up trying to explain why "it's obvious" is both untrue and unhelpful
Another sufferer here.
I've given up trying to explain why "it's obvious" is both untrue and unhelpful
I don't think anone has said its obvious have they?
I don't think anone has said its obvious have they?
On this thread, no. In day to day life they do.
I work in the control room of an offshore gas platform. Our screens are all green, with a yellow border if there's an issue. This is itself an issue, because there are certain yellow borders that if I miss we all get blown to kingdom come. No wonder we're not allowed to be pilots.
I've mentioned time and time again that it's a very serious problem, and it just gets a few "that's weird" and shrugged shoulders. There seems to be no interest in fixing it, and the fix is as simple as changing some hex in a colour palette.
I do find it hard to get annoyed by it all though. I just fiddle with the monitor settings to give a big enough contrast that I can pick out the yellow/green difference, and in my wider life there's very little impact whatsoever.
The percentages for rgb are percentage for each primary colour.
r 100
g 100
b 100
Is bright white
r 0
g 0
b0
is black
r o
go
b100
is pure blue
practical suggestions
If your wife can detect the amber and green can you calibrate the app? So you know the values in the future
Or can can you find a green gel filler which would dim the LED when it was amber. I’d need to work with your wife again to check this
This is clearly a serious issue. A have a good mate who is colour blind. From that i do really get the issue.
The tricolour led will be the cheap solution for the manufacturers . But it really can’t cost that much to add flashing for certain states, which is what i think my lawn mower charger does
I’m really shocked that there are safety critical systems that rely on full colour vision
I've mentioned time and time again that it's a very serious problem, and it just gets a few "that's weird" and shrugged shoulders. There seems to be no interest in fixing it, and the fix is as simple as changing some hex in a colour palette.
Mentioned as in "had a word with someone", or mentioned as in you put in a traceable written report? It seems like a fairly major oversight, especially as you say it's an easy fix (or make it flash).
I regularly prepare graphs of data for publication and where possible try to use different line/point styles rather than colour to distinguish data series (equivalent to the flashing/solid LEDs above). Where the use of colour is unavoidable, I’ve found this website really helpful for finding safe combinations. It’s also useful for seeing how some colour combinations appear to others.
It can’t surly mean that Orbea designed something properly (failing to do so with their MTB’s)
Their charger flashes blue when charging and goes solid blue when charged
Was that designed in or pure coincidence, and the cheaper than buying LED’s with different colours 😀
It may be little consolation to you, but even with “perfect” colour vision charging leds are a pita - blue, green, red, solid, flashing occasionally yellow or orange any of which can mean power on, charging, fully charge, error. If you don’t use the item regularly, knowing the colour is little help! Green LEDs can often be quite yellow like this, so then you have a question whether you are seeing green or yellow or possibly both.
I’m obviously very fortunate in this regard, I’ve never had a problem separating colours, I can always tell if an illuminated LED is red, amber, green, or sometimes a bit of a mixture if it’s changing state. A good thing when my job once involved retouching colour scans of photos for reproduction in high quality catalogs for certain sporting goods companies, and a newsletter for the British Gemological Society, where colour variations in gemstones can be very important and subtle!
Now, if I only had the same ability with numbers… 🤷🏼♂️
Another sufferer here.
I've given up trying to explain why "it's obvious" is both untrue and unhelpful
I don't think anone has said its obvious have they?
Sorry - wasn't clear, but as clarified by TheFlyingOx it happens all the time. I didnt mean to imply that anyone on this thread had done so.
My BiL found out he was colour blind during his national service, working on aircraft electrical systems... He spent 18 months doing pretty much nothing.