I really like this nice awareness video about colour blindness in sport – in football (or soccer, as you may know it) in particular. It is very well done and makes the point that it is not just about the spectators but about the players themselves – and even the referees!

I posted a few other comments recently about some recent activities in this area which you can see here and here.

However, despite the brilliance of the video about inclusivity in sport I want to make one point about the cone responses. The video states that the cones in the visual system are sensitive to red, green and blue light. There is a level of approximation where it is not unreasonable to say this – and to be honest, for this video it is probably fine. However, when we simplify things it can lead to misunderstandings which are then repeated when they really shouldn’t be.

The graph above shows the spectral sensitivity of the long-, medium- and short-wavelength sensitive cones. Note that neither is sensitive to just a few wavelengths; each has quite broad wavelength sensitivity. However, the L cone, in particular, is not even maximally sensitive to red. I took the table (below) from wikipedia but I think it is a reasonably summary of the colours that we normally associate with various wavelengths in the spectrum.

From this you can see that the L cone (the one that is sometimes referred to as the red cone) is maximally sensitive to light that we typically see as being yellow or even yellow-green.

One common assumption is that the cones are only sensitive to light that we see as being red, green and blue and it leads to people saying things such as – the visual system only sees in red, green and blue and then generates all the other colours form these. And this is a gross misrepresentation of course.

I gave a talk at the Leeds Philosophical and Literacy Society a week or so ago and it was recorded. In this talk I referred to this and related issues. If you would like to see it then you can do so here.