Olympic Logo triggers seizures!

Organisers of the official website of the 2012 Olympics in London were last night forced to remove animated footage from the site after reports that the use of flash imagery had triggered epileptic seizures.

Organisers said they had removed the footage after the charity Epilepsy Action said it had received calls from people who had suffered seizures after watching it. The charity said the images could be a danger to anyone with photosensitive epilepsy, which affects around 23,000 people in the UK.

According to Professor Graham Harding, who devised the test to ensure television images do not provoke epileptic fits, the piece was in contravention of Ofcom guidelines.

The animated footage was broadcast in television reports covering the launch of the controversial London 2012 logo on Monday. There were reports that the offending animation included the logo. One viewer, Christopher Filmer, told the BBC: "The logo came up on television and I was thinking about the 2012 Olympics and then I was out."

But a spokeswoman for the Olympics insisted that the offending footage related to a five second piece of animation featuring a diver in a swimming pool. "We have taken immediate steps to remove the animation from our website while checks are being conducted," she said. "The concerns are not about the design of the London 2012 logo."