The London 2012 Summer Olympic Games logo film was pulled Tuesday from the official website because of concerns that the animated footage’s flashing lights and colours caused epileptic fits in at least 10 people and caused scores of others to suffer from sickness and dizziness.
The video clip in question was a four-second piece of animation in which a diver plunged into a pool. A London 2012 spokeswoman said, “this concerns a short piece of animation which we used as part of the logo launch event and not the actual logo. It was a diver diving into a pool which had multi-colour ripple effects”. She said, “we have just been notified of the problem and we have taken immediate steps to remove the animation from the website. We will now re-edit the film”
Professor Graham Harding, an expert in clinical neuro-physiology who developed a test used to measure photosensitivity levels in animated TV material, told the BBC, “the logo should not be shown on TV at all at the moment. It fails Harding FPA machine test which is the machine the television industry uses to test images”. He said the footage did not comply with regulatory guidelines.
He added, “we now know of eight cases in which seizures have occurred. What it appears has happened is that the flash rate of the diving sequence contravenes the Ofcome guidelines”. He said that susceptibility was particularly prevalent among people aged seven and 19, and that three quarters of those who suffered from photosensitivity would do so for life.
Epilepsy Action, a British health charity, said the images could affect the 23,000 people in the UK who have photosensitive epilepsy.
Meanwhile, the spokeswoman denied that London 2012 head Sebastian Coe’s colour-blindness had anything to do with the logo’s striking shades of pink, blue, orange and green, reports the Times. She said, “that’s a ridiculous suggestion and he’s only partially colour-blind anyway”.
