BBC told to do more for colour blind people

Story from today's Guardian:

BBC told to do more for colour blind people after election complaints

(New topic, as the General Election 2015 thread is archived.)

The blame put at the door of the BBC as always, not at the other broadcasters who used almost identical colour schemes or the political parties for choosing their official colours in the first place. It was so much easier for broadcasters when it was Labour, Conservatives, Lib Dems and Other.

The other broadcasters don't have a Trust specifically looking out for viewers' interests for this kind of thing, nor such a big public service remit. The story here is more that the Trust has upheld the complaints, rather than that there were complaints at all, isn't it?

I don't know how representative that image of Jeremy lurching around in front of a bunch of boxes is, but they could've done a bit better than dark orange, orange, and a slightly orangey-yellow. That said, I think they could also do a lot better than having Jeremy Vine prancing around in front of a green cyc and having the camera fly about to show off how clever their computers are.

For many years, the BBC was always quite careful so as not to disadvantage Black and White viewers and there'd usually be a switchable monitor so you could see what B/W viewers would get. In fact, many monitors in a gallery were traditional B/W except tx and preview. Those days are gone of course (though completely incidentally, apparently some tens of thousands of B/W Licenses are still requested according to a recent news story). The BBC, like all broadcasters, has a duty to make accessible to all viewers its programmes, but it's very hard to incorporate every accessibility requirement into absolutely everything you do.

Far more pressing, in my view anyway, is the current trend in news for backgrounder packages which are cut for mobile devices, where there's just pictures, music and text. Absolutely no use for blind people whatsoever.

It's one of the basic principles of web accessibility, don't use colour to convey meaning on its own. But I'm struggling for how else you could show something as complex as election results in summary form.

Yep - and they are contrary to BBC Producer Guidelines - which make it clear that this should only be done in exceptional circumstances. It's also why foreign speech in news reports should be dubbed not subtitled, unless absolutely necessary, and in that case the contents of the subtitled content should be signposted in commentary before or after so that the overall report still makes sense.

Just as bad - lots of those BBC World News backgrounders used to have text that was outside 16:9 graphics safe, let alone 14:9... Which is a pity as lots of BBC World News viewers (North American outlets I believe is one case in point) get a 4:3 SD feed which is 14:9 letterboxed...

That's the thing that puzzles me.

I'm curious were there complaints to ITV and Sky News? The same color schemes and similar style maps were used there but not necessarily to the over the top Jeremy Vine VR/AR segments. It seems like it could be one of those things of people (who have the right to be upset) just focusing in on the BBC while giving a pass to other broadcasters.

Perhaps a red button stream with accessible graphics overlaid? Or using unique patterns along with colours and a constantly visible key to show what the patterns correspond to?

Some of the Jeremy Vine graphics (especially as regards the EU referendum result) could have been far clearer, I have to say.

As I said above, the Guardian's story is that the BBC Trust has ruled in favour of the complaints. There quite probably were complaints to ITV and Sky, but there is no "ITV Trust" or "Sky Trust" to rule on these things. "ITV gets complaints, says they will bear it in mind" doesn't make an interesting story.

So when the BBC Trust is abolished and its role replaced by Ofcom, do we think there will be separate guidelines for the BBC than for commercial channels?

Just like radio isn't much use for the deaf.

I was getting at is if the group the Guardian spoke to also complained to ITV or Sky considering they described the BBC's coverage as a "fiasco". Sure it wouldn't make an interesting story but the Guardian could have asked what they thought of other coverage or if they had any complaints. It would be common sense in my mind to inquire about the competitions coverage given how strongly they criticized the BBC.