Quote:
Originally Posted by Alphabet OJ
Something tells me that this may be part of the challenge however...
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No, I'm pretty sure nobody in their right mind would decide to intentionally prevent a significant proportion of the population from participating in FIRST as a driver for a medical reason as "part of the challenge." The goal is to teach you to be engineers and change the world, not make you feel excluded because of the way you were born. Color blindness affects up to 10% of American males, and considering the overwhelming percentage that population holds of events, that's pretty significant.
Sometimes FIRST doesn't (no pun intended) see everything that can go wrong. That's fine, FIRST is composed of humans, it happens. Now that we have found a problem the professional thing for us to do is to figure out a solution for it.
If anybody has the game pieces handy and a can of spray paint would you be willing to test how well it adheres to the surface of the balls? Please permit the paint to dry and then pick up the pieces and abuse them a little...bang them on the table or something. Does the paint chip? Does the texture vary significantly between the painted and unpainted version? My experience says it shouldn't, but with something like this it is worth testing before we offer it as a valid solution.
If these tests prove to reasonably not alter the game pieces, may I recommend (dark) blue, (medium) red, and white to spray them? Frankly if you don't like those colors I do not care, they can always be changed, provided that the three are chosen to be significantly different shades/values/lightness (God knows every field that deals with it has a different name for the quality).
Once a solution is found a small, (and very polite), petition can be set up (possibly something even as unscientific as a poll here on CD) to express the level of concern this problem has brought about from FIRST members. Maybe the higher-ups will read it, maybe they won't, but the numbers will certainly prove useful for quoting if you want to call your local FIRST offices and the people managing the regionals asking them if they would kindly consider permitting you to tag the game pieces to make them more friendly for the color blind. This isn't something we can demand, regionals are notoriously understaffed (I mean, good volunteers do not grow on trees). However, if we are all willing to pitch in and make a change (yes, that probably means "doing it ourselves") the regionals are probably unlikely to get directly in our way.
That said, we can't request a change until we have a viable solution. Whatever it is it needs to be fast, easy, durable, and not significantly alter the playing pieces.
If nobody can get their hands on the materials to try spray paint well...I'll try to make a trip to the store myself as soon as I can. Keep us all posted with whatever you have. I'm pretty eager to work to resolve this.