Color blind? (1 Viewer)

[Peter-PP]

Any color blind people here on this forum? If you are, how do you cope with it?

 

[Leila Dougan]

I'm not color blind but my father is. He copes by adjusting his routine to compensate and by asking me and other family members for help. He has great difficulty with dark colors and differentiating between brown, dark green, black, etc. He labels his clothing (mainly dress pants) by their color then keeps them in order in his closet. He also put dividers in his sock drawer so there is only one color in each compartment. When he gets dressed in the morning, he just knows to grab socks from his "brown" compartment when he grabs pants that are labeled "brown". Of course he relies on family to go shopping and sometimes for help in the morning to make sure he matches. He prefers to buy shirts that go with any of his pants so he has less to worry about.


He also wears special (high contrast?) glasses for night driving, but I'm not sure that's related to his color blindness and not his other vision problems.

Don't know if this helps or not, but it's all I got.

 

[Matthew Todd]

I have a brother who is color blind, but his seems quite mild. He has trouble telling the difference between some shades of oranges and yellows, and some reds and greens, I believe.

I don't think he even realized he was color blind for quite a few years.

Matt

 

[Tim Hoover]

According to the DoD, I have a red/green deficiency, but honestly I've never noticed it. I see reds and greens just fine, and can differentiate quite well between the two.

LOL...I went to electrical tech school with this guy who was completely color-blind. To this day, I have no idea how he found the correct resistor value

 

[D. Scott MacDonald]

I'm color blind, but it makes almost no difference in my daily life. In the university I needed help picking resistors for my hardware projects, and I needed a few hints somtimes on my computer imaging projects, but other than that I've hardly noticed. I did use this to my advantage when I was single, however, asking many girls to take me clothes shopping because of my "handicap". All in all, I thinks it's been more beneficial than not.

 

[PhillJones]

Did you know that there are few colourblind women because the ability to see colour is on the X chromasome? Seems to make sence to me. :wink:

Not only that but some women are Tetrachomatic; they can see 8 times as many colours as everybody else.

Obviously, I have nothing of use to add to this conversation.

 

[BrianW]

I can't tell the difference between green and brown. I cope by doing the following:

1.I never buy clothes, cars, or dogs I might get confused.

2.I use it as an excuse never to be dragged into a fabric store.

3.I go through life thinking that the grass looks just as good in the winter as it does in the summer.

When I was a kid, though, life was tough. I had identical green and brown pajamas (well, identical to me, anyway), and I was always mismatching the tops and bottoms. My parents thought it was cute at first, but then told me to quit it. I had no idea what they were talking about.

We also had a green chair and a brown chair – again identical to me. And my older sisters, very possessive of their “assigned seats” (“No, I was sitting there!”) were constantly telling me to sit in one or the other. I got beat up if I got it wrong, and I frequently did.

If I had known I was color blind, I might have been able to avoid a few bruises while I was growing up.

 

[Peter-PP]

I'm color blind, I wish I wasn't but that is my plain old "good luck". Coincidently, my younger brother is also color blind but less severe than I'm.

Yes, women are the gene carriers, so it is rare in women. Color blindness is also very common among scandinavian people (fair skin, blonde hair and blue eyes).

I used to hate it (still do sometimes) but as I get older I'm getting used to it but still not fun at all! I used to have a hard time wearing the right colored socks, matching clothes, shoes but now I just don't care. You non color blind people are just so very lucky. I would do anything to just see the beautiful fall colors, flowers, sunrise and the sunset.

I guess I should still count myself lucky that I wasn't born blind.

 

[Steve Felix]

I have red/green problems and had to have the TA help me pick out resistors. It makes TV calibration a frustrating effort, too...

It is very rare in women but I got it from a female (my Great Grandmother).

 

[Rob Gillespie]

That would explain shopping habits then.

Seriously though, I think women generally have much better colour recognition and matching abilities than men.

 

[Philip Hamm]

HA HA HA HA !!!! I I took an electronics course one time, and I know how to read resistor values. That cracked me up!

 

[Peter-PP]

Brian:

I can very well relate to your growing up and discovering your condition. Nobody told me that I was color blind, my teachers, parents never even knew.

I was about 15 when I first found out that there were other people like me. For me the flashing traffic lights can get me very confused. I cannot distinguish the flashing red lights from the yellow ones.

Being color blind has one advantage in the military. Camoflouge (sp?)does nothing for a color blind soldier.

 

[Law]

I'm color blind and have problems with blue and purple and sometimes green and brown.

If say you put two colored blocks in front of me, one blue, one purple, I could tell you which is which correctly. But if you showed me just a purple block on its own, I'd be guessing. Same thing with close shades of green and brown.

But really, what is color blindness anyway? Majority. Most people see colors a certain way, the rest of us see things a little different. If color blind people were the majority, they wouldn't be color blind.

I did once hear that they used color blind people in Vietnam to spot snipers in the trees because we can see differences in color better then most people. I've found that myself, show me 2 extremly close shades of brown, so close most people would say they're the same color, and I'll show you the difference. I might not know if it's brown or green, but I'll be able to see the difference.

 

[Peter-PP]

Law,

You must have the not so common colorblind disorder which is people who cannot "see" the color blue. To me, blue and purple look the same because I don't "see" red and red and blue makes purple so they appear the same to me. I would make a very bad detective because I won't be able to detect blood stains on surfaces. They may appear brown to me and may even go unnoticed.

I have the red/green and all the different shades related to those colors disorder. The rarest form is the monochromatic disorder in which people see things in black and white or grey tones.

Color blind people are born without the color cones in their eyes and that is why doctors and scientests do not use the term "disorder" for color blindness. The new term for color blind is now color deficient. I guess I'm missing the red and the green cones.

Camouflouge doesn't work for color deficients because they detect by shape and not by colors.

 

[Law]

Peter,

I don't think my disorder is the same as what you're describing. I can see red without a problem. In fact, I tend to use red more often (I'm a marketing designer) becaue I know I see it properly.

On the other hand, I'll very seldom use green or brown because I'm not very confidant that what I'm seeing in my designs is what everyone else will see.

 

[Peter-PP]

Law,

There are many different forms and from what you have described, you have no problem wth reds but you have problems with blue and green. You may have been born without the blue and green cones which is actually quite rare.

Have you ever taken a color deficiency test? Here is a link.

Color deficiency test

 

[Dave_Brown]

At last I finally feel loved and at home amongest the blind!
I don't really know what category I fall into as I can see color, I just can't tell you what it is. It's almost like there is one piece missing between when I see a color and my attempt to name it. I can see in red, green, blue, yellow, etc. just fine I just hardly ever know which one is which. Even more strange is I can tell when something matches or doesn't, but again, I have no idea what the colors are, just that they do or don't go together.

Anyone else have the problem when you tell someone you are color blind they instantly want to test you? I can't even count the number of times I would mention and the first thing someone would do is grab some object at random and say "well what color is this?" I always want to say "Oh, you caught me seeing in color! I was faking all along!"

I still remember taking my color vision test before the army. Before the test even started I told the lady I can't see them. I got one out of 15 in those find the number amongest the dots test and then had to do the "which light is red/green" from like 25 feet away. I just guessed and of course guessed wrong. Instead of marking me no color, she tried to embarass me by calling me up front in front of the 25 other guys and asking if I could read the word "red" or "green" on the lamp since I obviously couldn't tell the difference. I told her that while I couldn't see color do to a genetic issue, her inability to read must be related to pure ignorance if she needed my help. The crowd gave me a round of applause for that one.

 

[D. Scott MacDonald]

I'm still convinced that the color purple doesn't really exist, and is merely a communist plot ala the emperors new clothes . I've only been tested for blue/violet and red/green, but I've failed those miserably. I still can't say that it's really adversely affected my life, however, although I do have some funny anticdotes (like the time I spray painted a neon red line in the grass to mark where the garden goes, and then my wife got mad at me because I couldn't find it afterwards).

Oh, I once got fired from a job as a fast food cook after three days because I overcooked the burgers and it took too long (I couldn't tell when the meat was done so I erred on the side of caution). That and I'll never be a fighter pilot, but there's many other physical reasons why I wouldn't be an ideal choice anyway.

 

[Law]

Haha, that used to happen all the time and it really bugged me.

This one girl used to do it like it was a party trick, "What color's this.....hahahaha you don't know." One time I asked her if she asked parapeligics to get up and walk to her when she saw them in the mall and then laugh at them when they didn't. I don't think she ever made fun of me after that.

 

[Angelo.M]

Anyone interested in learning more about the most extreme form of color blindness, in which the cones essentially do not work, should read Oliver Sacks' The Island of the Color Blind, or seek out the Nova documentary based on the book. Sacks and another physician (who has the disorder) encounter an island population, none of whom perceive color.