What’s it Like to be Color Blind?
Does that mean he doesn’t see color at all? I can’t tell you how many people have asked that question about my son.
Color blindness, which is an inherited trait, runs rampant in my family. Grandmother, father, nephew, son.
In fact, one in twelve males is affected by it. That seems like a lot.
Where are all the color blind people?
I don’t hear much about color blindness, other than from my own family. Do these people not know they have it? Are they sort of embarrassed? Does it simply not come up in conversation?
Color blindness hasn’t caused much trouble for our family. Other than not being able to tell the difference between green and red . . . traffic lights. And then there’s the time my son asked why the bean dip tasted so strange, only to discover it was actually guacamole. But that’s fodder for another post.
So, back to the original question. Does that mean they don’t see color at all?
They see color.
Almost all color. I’ll try to make this uncomplicated. Most colorblind people get red and green mixed up and call them brown. A few people get blue and yellow mixed up.
And truthfully, there are a very, very, very few people who don’t see color at all. So few, that the odds of one of them reading this post are quite remote.
Take a peek at what a color blind person sees. (Compliments of the color blind vision simulator at Vischeck.)
Original Image
___________________________________________
Red/Green Color blind
What beautiful children, don’t you think? Notice the one on the far left. He’s the color blind one. And you can hardly tell!
Enjoy a complimentary Color blind Test, and have a great day!
I couldn’t tell the difference between the two photos
, thank goodness I’m diagnosed already.
This post is really useful. Thanks so much for sharing it. Most of my friends completely misunderstand how I fail to distinguish colors, and still be able to have smell -> synesthesia.
Lectin
Ha. I never thought about the sight/smell connection. Interesting!
For me, apparently I also possess synesthesia, the mingling of senses, so what I smell automatically impresses on me a color, which is the same for hearing stuff giving me a color impression too.
‘Thus my friends will always ask, how do you know that apple pies smell caramel yellow when you can’t tell the difference? For all you know you might be telling blue for yellow’, and I would roll my eyes at them.
Very lovely children you have! I am amazed 1 in 12 men are colorblind? As far as I know, I don’t know anyone that is. Perhaps there are, however, and it just doesn’t get discussed, like you said.
There must be lots of people that either don’t know, or don’t mention it. I’ve only met a handful of people. Maybe we should take a poll at our next social gathering.
that sucks.
It truly does, doesn’t it?
I have heard that 1 in 13 men are color blind, and only 1 in 10 of those will ever know it.
Then again, all men are color blind. Women know all the colors in the big crayon box – men only know the colors in the small box. We don’t know what colors like perrywinkle, fuschia, or all the various shades of blue or green are called. To us, there is just red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, white, black, brown. Anything else is just a mix of those, like blue-green.
That doesn’t mean all men are color blind, most just don’t know the names, or even care about the names. People who work with color in their jobs or hobbies would know, though (especially people who paint).
Yes, it seems like most men aren’t interested in shades of colors, etc.
http://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/
I never heard that only 1 in 10 will ever know it. That explains a lot.
I love the crayon box analogy. That’s so true. Men/boys typically do think in those color terms.
I’ve always thought color was a very subjective subject any way, so it would never have occurred to me to question what someone who was deemed color-blind saw. Very interesting to see the differences via the photos above. Thanks for sharing.
Sad that you have so much colorblindness in your family. But I’m glad you explained it to me, because now it doesn’t seem that bad. If it’s only mixing a few colors, such as red and green, instead of getting all colors confused, I can see how it may not be that bad. And the difference in the pictures, it could be a lot worse.
At least it’s not black and white. Good post. =]
Good to know. It’s interesting to see what it looks like.
Wow thanks for the visual. I had no idea color blindness was so common.
I have a colleague who is colour-blind and we design software applications for customers. Guess how he gets the color right? He copies the RGB code for each required colour, gets a non colourblind person to verify it, and Voila! We have a snazzy application
I’ve heard about programs that will automatically adjust the colors on websites, so that they will be color-blind-user friendly.
This is so interesting! I’ve often wondered what being color blind would be like and now I have an idea. I’m sure they don’t feel the loss because it’s the only way they’ve ever known to experience color, but dear lord how I would hate to loose two colors out of my pallet.
Thank you for this. Very enlightening!
Yes, the men in my family don’t know the difference. But I think about it occasionally. Have you ever heard that song that talks about “dreaming in colors I have never seen?” I can’t remotely imagine a color I’ve never seen. Yet there are actual colors that my son has never seen. But He can’t imagine them. So . . . are there other colors that the rest of us can’t see? Getting deep now.
Thanks for stopping by, Kate!
Really interesting. I had no idea so many people were colorblind. I also didn’t know it was inherited. Congrats on another Freshly Pressed!
Thanks, Renee!
I have a great friend who lives in NYC that I was recently able to visit. He’s color blind…and he’s a fashion designer. He’s currently working for Macy’s on their jeans line. I guess the colorblindness hasn’t been an issue. (He wears a lot of black.)
Crystal
http://www.crystalspins.com
The men in my family don’t work in fields where it matters. My dad wanted to be an electrician, but he couldn’t because he would have gotten the wires switched.
It’s interesting how some color blind people adjust to the condition – like your friend, the fashion designer. It’s amazingly cool.
that is amazing..actually, colourblind people only miss the true shade of a colour by some margin..secondly, whatever shade they see is called by either red or blue or any other colour by peopel around them. it gets fixed in their minds that a particular shade they see is red or yellow or any other…as simple as that…
Designer, well…that is really interesting..
Exactly. They learn the names of the colors that they see. They don’t know them by any other name.
Freshly Pressed again! Time to watch that WordPress chart change again.
Great post – I’ve always wondered about color blindness.
Drive on,
- M.
Thanks Miranda! When I was on your blog, I noticed you had been Freshly Pressed a couple of times. How did affect you? And your blog?
Thanks for the post. I wonder a lot about color-blindness and dyslexia (I’m very ignorant about them both). I also wonder a lot about the traffic light thing a lot: when color-blind men are at a traffic light can they not notice when one of the lights light up? I mean the light goes brighter even if you can’t tell what color (red or green) lights up. What if color-blind people were trained to stop when the “light at the very top of the three” (red to us) lights up and drive when the one “at the very bottom” (green to us) lights up? Or am I over simplifying things? Sorry if I sound ignorant. I really want to learn.
My son can see enough difference to tell the traffic lights . . . usually. My dad, on the other hand, just knows what order they are in. Sometimes that gets him in trouble, if a certain city/town has things switched around. It can be interesting.
Thanks for sharing the information. My family is taking the color blink test in your link. Do you know why the high percentage of color blindness? Thank you.
http://www.moneyprovidesfreedom.wordpress.com
Color blindness is usually passed through daughters to their children. My dad, who is color blind, has three daughters. So even though none of the daughters are colorblind, we’re multiplying it exponentially I guess. From what I understand, if my dad had only sons, it wouldn’t be passed on nearly as strong. Cool, huh?
Good thing I am diagnosed with colorblindness as well because those pictures looked the same to me. I love telling someone that I am color blind and then telling them the color of about 50 different objects that they ask about to somehow prove that I can see colors. I also work with about 12 guys in tech support and 7 of them are color blind!
Yeah, my son has fun with it too. His friends always ask him things like, “What color does my shirt look to you?” And he just rolls his eyes.
This is really interesting and I’ve always wondered what color blind people see! Thanks for sharing.
http://simplysolo.wordpress.com
So glad you could come by. I’ll come over and check out your blog later.
Very informative and well written post…I always thought that color blindness just was between the colors red and green. (the photo was an enormous help for me). In either color photo your kids are beautiful!
Thank you! So glad you could stop by.
Somebody told me that my blog is “visually stimulating” … DOES IT MEAN THAT I’M COLORBLIND?
http://mytreetv.wordpress.com/
Keep it GREEN!
Love the lime green! Quite “visually stimulating.” If it looks dull to you, then you just might be colorblind. But I’m guessing it doesn’t look dull to you either.
The photo is very interesting, i knew that certain colors were seen differently, but it is just amazing to see for myself! I had no idea color-blindness is so common.
I also find it surprising that it’s so common, because I don’t hear of it often.
Now I know what my 13-year-old sees. He is always miss naming colors and was diagnosed a few years ago with color-blindness. Thanks for a great post.
In our family, the boys sort of want to be color blind. Their “cool” older cousins are colorblind. And they want to be like their grandfather and his brothers. We’re a weird bunch over here.
Thanks for the idea..Had no such idea that color blindness shows this difference in color…
So glad you could stop by. Have a great day!
many thanks for the post. i now understand how my fiancée sees the world.
but yes, many have not known that they have got color blind until they submit application on something (e.g.: driving license or academic test with color blind test as one of the requirements).
My dad found out when he was in the military. They tested everyone going in. Up until that time, he had planned to be an electrician. Fail. Got to be a radio operator instead.
i have a friend who is a costumer and he would always pick up green fabric and say that it was brown and i thought he was crazy. i was like what is wrong with you! but then he figured out that he is colored blind! he is so amazing at his job and the costumes always looked amazing, it never affected his talent at making clothes.
It’s amazing how creative people are creative no matter what. I love it!
Thank you for sharing this valuable information.
Hello, I’m color blind only for green. I don’t mix up green with red, I can perfectly recognize red. My brother has problems with green, red, blue and yellow. As you mentioned, it sometimes gets you in some kind of trouble, although you learn to live with it. I found out about my condition at an early edge, and I’ve got used to it. The saddest part of this problem, is knowing you’re missing exceptional views from things you know for sure are made from colors you can’t see. You got to comfort yourself with other peoples’ descriptions. My wife’s eyes are green; I have to imagine how other people can really see them. I have a friend of mine who is totally color blind.
Reading this brings back memories of when I did papers over color blindness. I loved researching it all. It was interesting learning about it since so many people in our family are color blind. Also, that even though it is very rare great granmother was color blind! =p I always tell people about color blindness and they think its soooo terrible. However, it really isnt that bad!
Love you Mom!
Jessica
p.s. we are pretty cute in that picture =p
What a great and interesting post! Congrats on being Freshly Pressed….Joanie
Fascinating! I was also surprised by the 1 in 12 statistic. One of my cousins is color blind, but I can’t think of anyone else . . .
I had a grandfather that was R-G colorblind– the gene kind of died out with my father’s generation so there is no chance that it’d continue. Yay color!
Thanks for sharing. I love the ending where you mention “you can hardly tell!”
I knew someone in college who was color-blind, and she was a girl, so it’s extremely rare for a girl to get it but possible. It’s one of those things that shows up on the X chromosome, and not only was her mom a carrier, but her dad was also colorblind himself; in cases like that, even a daughter has a 50/50 chance of getting it. It’s just not very common for a color-blind man to randomly marry a woman who didn’t know she was a carrier, so colorblind girls are also relatively rare.
My brother is colorblind, but we didn’t find out until he was 15 and taking an eye test to get his driver’s permit. We just thought he didn’t care if his shirt matched his shorts. Based on 15 years of watching him, it seems he has a more limited color pallet. He describes all pastels as “white” and purple and blue are the same. Only occasionally does he mix up green and red unless the lighting is dim. He can’t tell the difference between green & yellow traffic lights and the streetlights. Luckily he can see the red ones at night, but he had a bit of a scare when we discovered this in St. Louis where they put the streetlights on the side of the road rather than the middle and the red lights would pop out of nowhere.
My cousin is colorblind, and thanks to my brother, we figured it out pretty quickly. My great-grandfather was also colorblind and if he liked what you were wearing he would complement you on your “pretty red dress” no matter what the actual color. Being an artist, I find colorblindness absolutely fascinating.
“In fact, one in twelve males is affected by it. That seems like a lot.”
One in twelve males in your family or worldwide?
The second picture kind of looked like a TV with really bad tint or hue (can’t remember which).
My father is red/green colorblind. We’ve had a lot of fun at his expense over the years.
We told him the white bathmat and toilet seat cover he bought were pink. He panicked. We laughed.
We’re always hearing stories about how he dresses himself for work. Socks of different colors. Grey pants, brown shirt…
“What an odd color of orange for a car.”
“That’s blue, Dad.”
And so on. Thankfully he is a great sport.
So I understand red/green and a few in my family have that, but my co-blogger/best friend has blue/purple colorblindness. I think its safe to say that’s pretty rare?
Actually, it can be argued that we are all color blind:
A color in a strict sense would be light in a small frequency intervall; however, the human eye does not truly recognize these intervals. Instead, it recognizes stimuli of receptors for three broader, partially overlapping intervals from which the perception of color is created—with a considerable loss of information and with physically different color combinations being mapped to the same virtual color. (Cf. e.g. the way a computer monitor works.)
Incidentally, many animals have four receptors, many mammals only two, and official color-blindness typically arises through a problem with these receptors.
Then there is the issue of frequencies outside the range that the human eye can detect…
I think this is awesome. Although is does stink that people have to deal with being colorblind, I am glad you gave people a look into it.
My dad and my boyfried are both colorblind and I never thought really anything of it. Sometimes my boyfriend will not notice cars break lights and his stops in the car are very delayed, as so are his motions forward after the light turns green. Now I see why after the picture of AFTER colorblind has been in affect. My dad always mixes colors up. More than just red and green and yellow. Now, I will be more curtious when my boyfriend makes a sudden stop or fails to move fast off of a red light, because it cannot be easy to not really see what most everyone else does.
Knew about the green/red thing and about them being able to see color, but how cool to see the comparison right there!!!
We’ve been playing with that website for a couple of years. Made for a terrific research paper, and a science fair project. Thanks for stopping by.
Color blindness runs in my family but none of us ever tested ourselves, it always emerged as we grew up. When my brother was twelve I told him to get a yellow highlighter and he came back with green. That’s how we knew.
When my nephew was little, he would get angry with other children for peeling the paper labels off his crayons. Without the labels, he didn’t know what colors they were!
That is an interesting article.
Thanks! Glad you could stop by.
It seems to me being color blind would be hard to deal with. If I was color blind and watching tv and someone turns to me and says “the picture on your tv is great”. You wouldn’t get the same effect if you were color blind. People that are color blind miss out on a lot. Isn’t there any kind of procedure for color blindness? I’m sure you’ve been asked this before.
As far as I know, there’s no cure or procedure. But the men in my family don’t mind all that much. They don’t know any different.
noxcrucifix, I recall that one girl I knew in college had a family where her mom, as a carrier, was the only one of them who WASN’T colorblind. One time she was dying her hair, and it turned some awful color, and they all raced into the bathroom when they heard her shriek in horror standing in front of the mirror … and they were all going, “What is it?! What’s wrong?” while she was standing there with hair some color like green that was not normally found in nature. They had no clue what she was hollering about.
Funny/Sad story. Thanks for sharing.
The really strange thing was how she had escaped being detected for so long, even in school. I still remember when I was in kindergarten when the teacher Mrs. Martin called us all up to her at her desk one by one and pointed to the crayons in a little box and quietly asked us what each color was. At the time I had no idea why she was asking, and thought, “I know my colors, why is she asking me this?” It wasn’t until I was an adult that I realized that she was checking us all for color blindness — and she made a point of doing it individually and mixing up the crayons in the box after each child.
The girl I knew in college stood in a line with all the other kids as their teacher pointed to pieces of construction paper in view of everyone and asked each child in order, “What color is this?” She said she just memorized what each kid said — third from the left is pink, fifth from the right is green … and escaped being detected. *sigh* Kids who are color blind must develop some incredibly clever coping techniques that those of us will full color vision don’t even realize.
Sorry to be so long-winded …
wow! Seeing the actual photo difference made it easy to “get it!” Thanks
I was amazed the first time I saw it. After being around color blind people all my life, it was nice to finally know what they could see.
This was very interesting, and the photo that showed how colorblind people see things was very cool. I didn’t know that being colorblind is so common! It must be hard to get used to being colorblind one you’ve found out you have it. Congrats on getting Freshly Pressed!
I think most color blind people don’t know the difference. They’ve never seen things with all colors. Thanks for commenting!
Wow, V.V. Another great post, and another spot on Freshly Pressed! You go, girl!
My oldest son is color blind. He is a little self-conscious about it, mostly because his sister is a budding artist and makes a big deal about incorporating color into her work. And his mom is a writer and loves using color in her descriptions (I’m inadvertently adding to his insecurity). But I assure him that color-blindness is nothing to be embarrassed about. I tell him that he’s a great kid – which he is – and that in the grand scheme of things, color blindness is really not that big of a deal. The most problem we’ve really had so far has been an ongoing debate about what color to paint his room.
And now about the traffic light thing… yikes! I hadn’t even thought of that! I hope that doesn’t present a problem when he’s old enough to drive!
Amy, so glad you came by. Good to see you!
I don’t think my son was ever very self-conscious. Maybe when he first started pre-school. But he had older color blind cousins whom he idolized, so it made it pretty cool.
My son can tell the difference in the traffic lights, but his granddaddy has to remember what order they’re in.
Have a good day!
I am a colour graphic designer
its a mild case of red/green colour blindness, i didn’t actually know i was colour blind until two years ago when asked if an led light for my cell phone charger was red or green :’) but it hasn’t ever affected my day to day duties and i doubt it ever will, but id imagine that most people that have colour blindness haven’t realised it 
I bet you’re right. Maybe they have a light case and just don’t ever have problems with it. It’s interesting. Thanks for commenting!
I just showed this to my roommate who is colorblind and he couldn’t tell the difference between the pictures. That seems so sad to me since I just love me some colors.
My son says that one of the pictures is lighter than the other. Besides that, he says they’re the same. It’s so interesting to me. He sees a different world than I do.
Paul Newman, the actor, was apparently color blind. I didn’t really understand what color blindness meant either. Thanks for explaining with the photo. It’s cool to see how someone else sees. ipeoplewatch.wordpress.com
I didn’t know about Paul Newman. Cool. I wonder what other celebrities are color blind.
I know Montel Williams is or was — he got it as a result of MS. Weirdly, it shifted and cleared up for him on a plane flight one day IIRC for no reason — I remember seeing an interview with him where he said he was sitting on the flight next to his wife and suddenly started seeing colors he hadn’t see in years, and looked at her and saw what color her eyes were for the first time; he’d met her after having acquired colorblindness from the MS.
Wow, that’s really neat, thanks for sharing! It’s amazing how rampant that trait runs in your family.
Apparently color blindness is passed through daughters, and my dad had three.
That was a great post. Thank you very much for opening my eyes. 15 years ago, a friend of mine said he was color blind. I never knew what that meant until now. A real “eye opener”.
Thanks. glad you stopped by.
My husband is color blind! They diagnosed him in the 1st grade when he had to paint a color wheel and of course botched it all up. The teacher actually yelled at him because she thought he was screwing around.
Thanks for sharing — interesting to see things the way he does.
My son’s preschool teacher tried to convince him (and me) that he really did know the colors of the crayons. Not.
That’s really interesting, thanks for sharing. My father was color blind and so is my son. I’m going to play around with the site you offered. Thanks again.
I love that site. It’s so interesting. Have fun with it.
I worked for a man who was severely (??) color blind. He was convinced a teal stripe in my office was purple. He said, “Just looking at it, it looks grey, but if I concentrate I know it’s purple.”
In the early nineties, my husband and I put down hunter green carpet. (as was the style back then) My dad was convinced it was black.
This is a great post. Love that this is freshly pressed to bring attention to this situation.
I met a guy ones who worked at Trader Joe’s who was color blind. Most people don’t believe him. I found it fascinating, as I do with this post.
Thank you,
Taylor
I know what you mean. Lots of people think my son is joking when he says he’s color blind. It’s just not a well-known condition.
I am red green colour blind as are two of my brothers my other brother is not but should be as colour blindness is carried on the X chromosome, about 1 in 33 women are colourblind as they need both XX chromosomes to carry it as it is recessive. Men get it because we only carry one X chromosome.
There are two types of red green colour blindness in my case I can tell the two pictures apart some other people can not.
We are not missing anything it is just we perceive wavelengths of light on a slightly shifted spectrum so I can see things you never could and vice versa. Apparently colour blind people make excellent snipers in the military because of this. We can spot people trying to camouflage themselves.
No kidding! That’s interesting/cool/awesome. I’ll have to tell my son about that. He’ll probably want to be a sniper now.
Post was very interesting. Having never known a person with this ailment personally, I had no idea what it was like.
Thanks! Glad you stopped by.
This is an interesting article. Another food for thoughts.
I had a classmate once who claimed to be color-blind. We actually didn’t know whether we should believe him.
I lot of people are skeptical, but I’m sure there is also the occasional kid claiming to be color blind when he’s not. You never know.
Congrats on getting freshly pressed !! Colour blindness is not that rare, it’s just that many people don’t talk about. Many a time, the problem arises mainly for those travelling a great deal. Usually, when one of the senses, ie.e sight is slightly compromised, your other senses take over and become extra-perceptive. Which is why, colour blind people have an extra sense of smell or tactile response. Some have even become major contributorS of science like Dalton, Newmann etc. At least, all of you are blessed with a pair of beautiful eyes. Thanks for this interesting post. Have a good day.
“When one of the senses is slightly compromised, your other senses take over and become extra-perceptive.”
That’s so interesting. I never thought of it that way, but it makes sense. Thanks!
Interesting post. Vision is such a fascinating subject. But I don’t think any of us can ever exactly know what other people see because senses are such private functions. What looks blue to 4 people may look red to 7 people (who describe red as “blue”).
My son rolls his eyes at people who ask him things like, “What color does my shirt look to you?” He almost always says the right color. Like you say, he’s learned what to call it. He doesn’t know that color by any other name.
SO crazy! my little brother is colorblind. He can’t see a difference between blue and purple (he always fails those green/yellow/orange number things). Thanks for sharing!
Glad you could stop by. Have a great day!
For a person whose spiritual sight is developed, all things are compassionately, gloriously, magnificently colourless. Spiritual sight can be developed only through spiritual education. And the Internet today can tell us what is spiritual education.
Thanks for stopping by and commenting.
I was in school, ions ago, with a young man that said he was color blind. He never really explained it to me, yet now I understand. Thank you. I must say, he did say that everyone told him what to wear and he did need help buying almost everything. I have a better appreciation now. Did not dawn on me about the colors of food as well. Nice Post.
Thank you. So glad you dropped by.
I always wonder how many people even know that they are color blind. I’m sure there are a bunch of people who never got diagnosed and don’t even know that what they see is different from what everyone else sees.
That’s true. They don’t know any different, so they don’t recognize that they have a problem. And usually it’s no problem at all.
Nice article VV, I always thought colorblind was seeing no colors. Thanks for the clarification and to give us a sample of it with your beautiful family!
Thank you so much for posting this! Both of my sons, along with my father, are color blind. One son is more severely color blind than the other and has a very hard time with most colors unless they are very vivid. I love the color blind simulator and will pass it on!
I look at these two images and see not one difference. My mother and sister look and say the non-color blind one is more vibrant. I am color deficient/blind. So yeah…
Very informative post! I had no idea. I wonder if, generally, people who are color blind have a higher suicide rate than people who aren’t?
I never even thought about that before. Interesting. What would be the reasoning behind it?
As someone who is not color blind, I take for granted the vibrancy of the colors in this world. The trees, the sky, the grass… It’s so beautiful when you really think about it. Imagine not seeing those colors? Just gray sky and grass? I guess if you never knew their real colors it wouldn’t be of much importance, but for some it may be depressing to live in such a dull world. Just a thought.
How do you know that the world appears grey or lacks in vibrancy?
All we can know is that the color-blind have a reduced ability to differ between colors—not how the colors are actually mapped to internal perceptions.
(In addition, the proportion with a so large impediment that “black-and-white TV” seeing would be a possibility is very small.)
VV:
I just found out that my twins are colorblind; they inherited it from my father-in-law. I was bummed when I found out. One of the twins has a congenital heart defect known as hypoplastic left heart (the left side of his heart stopped working en utero), and had a kidney transplant three years ago. So he has three kidneys, half a heart, and is colorblind. Can he please catch a break? Then I educated myself a little (to include your post), and I feel better. Thanks for sharing!
Tony
Coloblindness hasn’t been a big deal in our family (for the most part), but I can see how in your son’s case, it’s just one more thing. Let me know if you have any questions about it. I’d love to help in your education. Or you could talk to my son about it. Have a great day!
That’s interesting- thanks for sharing.
Glad you enjoyed it.
I have a friend who sees in shades of grey….
Wow. That must be the super rare form of color blindness. A true handicap.
Hi V.V.,
I came across your blog when researching for my short documentary on color blindness.
It’s finished now and I thought it might interest you. I used a software program to simulate what the world looks like to red/green color deficient people.
You can see it here: http://www.nosuchthingascolor.com
Thanks Brittany!