[Ben Tanaka]

So non-white discs are now a fully established part of beach ultimate.

My understanding is that this is purely for broadcast reasons. The argument being that non-white discs appear better on video than white discs. I categorically disagree with this. White is perfectly suitable for just about any condition, and the only conditions where it is difficult to see are when the field/background are so bright that a non-white disc has a minimal impact at best.

However, if this is really the way that BULA/WFDF wants to go, I want to at least advocate for doing away with pink discs specifically.

As someone with poor colour vision, these are absolutely impossible for me to see on screen. Approximately 1 in 12 men (and a smaller, but not zero percentage of women) also have some level of colourblindness, so I know I must not be alone in this. Pink is a tint of red, and red-green colourblindness is the most common form.

Here’s a few screenshots I took from the recent Beach Worlds:

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These are not cherry picked – I just paused while the disc is in flight. I also tried to watch games from different days, with different weather conditions, to see if I could enjoy watching any of the tournament. In all of these pictures, unless I take some time to carefully scan the photo, the disc is completely invisible to me. The white jerseys on the other hand stand out extremely well. In the rainy picture in particular, there is a white disc lying on the sideline that is far more visible to me than the disc in flight.

Please consider going back to white discs, with a non-white alternative in extremely sunny and/or white sand conditions.

If non-white discs are truly here to stay, at the very least, please, PLEASE, stop using pink discs. They make the sport objectively more difficult to watch for nearly 10% of people.

For what it’s worth, I think yellow discs are far more visible than pink. While I still prefer white, I haven’t had any visibility issues with non-white discs that are not a tint of red or green.