This Saturday the 6th of September is #colorblindawarenessday, so today we’re highlighting some of the EnPointe Display Box’s accessible features, made to assist fencers, coaches and referees with vision difficulties.
Our Display Box was built to assist those who experience vision difficulties such as red-green or blue-yellow colour blindness. We’ve done this by including accessibility features with these conditions in mind.
Our Display Box includes features like:
- Different Display Options*
All other scoring machines on the market have only one display option – red/green square shaped lights that indicate an on-target hit, and yellow or white square shaped lights that indicate an off-target hit. For those that have red/green colour blindness, it can be difficult to tell which hit was made by which fencer, especially without turning their head to view the scoring machine face-on – which risks a card from the referee.
To improve this, we came up with our three Display options that are available on every EnPointe Display Box:
The EnPointe Style (red/green)
- This is the default display option. It uses the traditional green, red and white colours to denote on and off-targets, but has directional shaped arrows that indicate which fencer has made the hit, giving extra visual cues for those who have difficulty distinguishing colours.
The Colour Friendly Style (red/blue)
- These colours and shapes were specifically chosen to be accessible for fencers and referees with the most common forms of colour blindness. This style also uses different shapes for different hits (on vs off target), and displays colours that appear contrasting for those with and without red-green and blue-yellow colour blindness.
The Classic Style (red/green)
- This option has the traditional fencing display colours (green, red and white) in the squares of colour used on conventional scoring machines.
- Differently shaped Display lights. We created a scoring machine which features different shapes for different types of hits, so that the lights are more visible at a glance, or in the periphery of the fencer’s vision. Our on-target and off-target hits are also shaped differently, with directional colour blocks for on-targets, and cut out white directional arrows for off-targets.
- A library of different scoring sounds. You can have a row of EnPointe wireless scoring machines, all with different sounds to indicate a hit. This means fencers with vision difficulties don’t disrupt their bout by turning their heads to see the lights on the scoring machine, on an occasion where a nearby piste is using the same type of scoring machine with the same scoring sound. This feature is also designed to improve “Figure-to-Ground Discrimination” (distinguishing a particular sound against a background environment) for fencers with auditory processing disorder.
- Display Brightness settings: While our signature black housing of the Display Box lights provide great contrast for the coloured lights, we also have brightness controls that allow the user to choose how bright the LEDs are. This feature is particularly useful as it allows athletes to choose to fence during the day and evening, both in a fencing hall or even outside in the sun, all while the scoring display remains clear and bright.
- Pitch library and Volume control. Fencers can choose from a number of pitches, from C4 to C8. This allows them to both choose the tone that they can hear clearly, and to find a tone that best cuts through the noisy environment of a fencing tournament or practice hall. Again ensuring that those with vision difficulties are not only having to view lights on their box to distinguish between scoring machines on different pistes.
Accessibility features like our colour-friendly display style as well as others like our sound library, are part of what earned our Display Box product an Australian Good Design Award!
For more information on the features of the Display Box, or for instructions on how to enable these settings from the Display Box menu, see the display box or the user manual.
Please don’t hesitate to contact our team if you have an accessibility requirement that we may be able to accommodate in a firmware update, or a future product. We’re always looking for ways to advance inclusivity in the sport, and to improve accessibility for all in the fencing community!
Take a look at some of the Display options on the EnPointe Display Box in the following video*.
*Please note that the colours displayed online may be altered by the screen on your phone, computer or other device that is being used to view the colours on the Display Box.