Tag Archives: Japan

traffic lights for everyone

About 8% of men are colour blind. In the past I have written about how designers may not adequately take this into account effectively ignoring 4% of the population. I also wrote about how in Korea the problem of traffic lights for colour blind people was being addressed by using different shapes for the different colours.

Now I am interested to hear about a development from Japan – Professor Ochiai at Kyushu Sangyo University has developed a clever modification that is not noticed by people with normal colour vision but helps those who are colour blind. Before the introduction of LED lights people often could tell red from green by the difference in brightness. But LED lights are so bright that they look rather similar in brightness, and for someone with red-green colour blindness they may look identical. Professor Ochiai has added a blue cross to the red light which is very visible to colour-blind observers but can hardly be noticed by the rest of us. Very clever!!

The new lights are being tested in Fukuoka and are due to go on test in Tokyo soon.

Tokyo blues

East Japan Railway Co. has spent £100,000 fitting out all 29 stations on Tokyo’s central train loop, the Yamanote Line, with the strong bulbs.

The operators believe they will emit a soothing glow, despite the absence of any scientific proof that the method reduces suicides.

Mizuki Takahashi, a therapist involved with the project, said: “We associate the colour with the sky and the sea.

“It has a calming effect on agitated people, or people obsessed with one particular thing, which in this case is committing suicide.”

A total of 68 people threw themselves in front of trains in the 12 months until March, up from 42 in the same period the year before. The lights will be hung at the end of each platform, a spot where people are most likely to jump to their deaths.

blue tokyo

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

See http://tinyurl.com/ydocbh6