AR for Color Blind?

I got my AR yesterday and wow. What a beast of a machine. This thing almost made me vomit from the low end at one point last night. Needless to say, I love it.

That aside: after playing with it and reading the manual a few times it is very apparent that the colors play a huge roll and get a tad confusing at first. Between modes and active/inactive color differences it is a lot to take in.

I’m not color blind myself, but a good friend of mine who is planning to purchase an AR, is color blind. He’s had a few elektrons already and complained about the red / green variations on the other units, but the AR is next level color coding. I’m interested if anybody who IS color blind has an AR yet and could chime in on accessibility?

Sorry, I don’t have an AR, but I am red/green colorblind, but have not ever had a problem with any of the other Elektrons in this regard. Just wanted to point that out, in case someone who is colorblind does not have a problem with with the AR, and your friend still might have. :wink:

I am lightly colourblind i.e. I’m fine with distinguishing sharp colours when they are sharp red or green or yellow, but I DO struggle a lot as soon as it’s “different shades of” , for instance a light red will look close to a light yellow and a light green. And that’s typically where LEDs fail on me

over the years I’ve used MD, A4 and now OT.
I don’t use the AR yet so I can not comment on that one.

But I must say I’m quite annoyed by the coloured LED overall… and Elektron is no exception. Would have been quite easy, say, with blue led vs. yellow led vs. red led scheme, but as it is now, it’s a bit tricky sometimes for me…

so no, all these coloured LEDs are not great for colourblind people like us…

I’m slightly red/green deficient and have trouble distinguishing the amber from green LEDs on the A4.
It is a shame, because red/green is the most common variant (approx 8% males), and this kind of problem could have been easily avoided (eg. using red/white/blue/yellow) LEDs.
It’ not a deal breaker, I just sometimes have to double check whether or not a track is muted.
May get a bit annoying if I ever tried to perform live though.

I think that is an easy change on Elektron’s part, they could make a color theme in the set-up…

Hope they do for you guys…

+1 for RGB led customization/accessibility controls

The pads look fantastic, and there’s some nice RGB led’s underneath. Let us pick between some colour themes and brightness levels.

I hope they unlock this with an update relatively soon.

I have r/g problems and it’s scary when using octa & A4 but the pads aren’t causing me hardly any issue compared to LEDs of the other boxes

Closely related:

http://www.elektronauts.com/t/a4-for-the-color-blind-chaps/820/4697

IHDR,

I’m color-blind and have had trouble with the color of diodes in Elektron gear - and MFB gear to boot.

But the AR hasn’t been an issue at all. The color choices for the pads are pretty gaudy and easy-to-see to these eyes anyway.

Hope your buddy does well with them too.