The Football League backtracks on the orange ballintroduced to give a “strong and distinctive visual impact on the pitch” instead of the traditional white or yellow. After the protests also formalized by Aidacon consumers and the association “How colorblind people see”, this morning – according to what the association itself reports – the president of the League made an about-face: “We have received many just protests about thisthere are people who can’t see it due to color blindness. We have asked our supplier to bring forward the supply of new balls. For each match 25 balls are needed, that’s 500 balls per week plus the ones we give to the teams for training. They put into production all new balls with a color that you can see, but it will take some time before we can replace this orange: not a happy choice. We will return to yellow or white“, said Ezio Maria Simonelli, guest of Radio Anch’io Sport on Rai Radio 1.
Claps’ satisfaction
The orange ball was considered cutting edge because it uses a technology that allows it to maintain its shape and allows it to absorb less water but it was a real own goal: no one had taken into account the color-blind fans. In fact, those who have this problem have difficulty recognizing some colors over others: they only distinguish the colors yellow and blue over red and green, therefore the orange sphere appears the same color as the grass. Satisfaction was expressed by Aidacon, in the person of its president Carlo Claps: “Many fans felt hurt in their rights as consumers, especially those who have incurred considerable expenses at home for annual subscriptions with TV platforms. Our requests have finally been accepted, it was not tolerable that the top Italian football league ignored the needs of inclusiveness and visual quality of its users, causing economic and moral damage to subscribers“.
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