I’m fairly red green colour blind but it doesn’t generally cause too many issues.
Just moved to a new company and toilet doors have a tiny patch of red/green for engaged vacant in the shadow of the handle.
That and the tube map are probably the most irritating issues I have come across.
Just wondering what issues other people have had?

my dr recently diagnosed me as being colour blind, i must admit, it came completely out of the green

(i’ve offered no help here 🙁 , i apologise)

Colour coded spreadsheets or similar.
Especially when the text is small or on a coloured background.

+1 for toilet locks.

Climbing walls using purple holds and blue holds (or red / black etc etc) on the same panels.

Tiny warning lights that show as green or amber. I can’t tell the sodding difference!

All pretty minor in the grand scheme of things though – at least I can still see!

Si

@Scc999 what sort of toilets do you need to climb out of?

Friend of ours was on the radio the other day after complaining about a UEFA game:

https://twitter.com/Mariesthename/status/511964451449630721/photo/1

The story got picked up by The Sun.

The BBC coverage of the referendum results were also daft colours:

Here's the BBC Referendum information which is causing issues for some colour blinds. We believe red deficients find…

Posted by Colour Blind Awareness on Thursday, September 18, 2014

Being a colour blind designer means my life is based around pantone numbers and cmyk values.

Skiing is more exciting though

When I worked as a photographer two of my colleagues in our section were colour blind. One ran the video section the other was my boss. He still felt he could offer useful “advice” on the quality of our colour printing.
As we dealt with explosives most of the time I would suggest bomb disposal might be an area to steer clear of. 🙂

I can’t see the numbers in those dot pictures. Can’t say this has ever been a problem in my life – doesn’t seem to affect everyday vision at all, but then how would I know? Don’t think this is full monty colour blindness – described as a colour defect when I was tested at school.

Apparently there’s a number here.

I’m colour blind with loads of colours – reds, greens, light yellow and light green, purples and blues etc.

The only time its ever really affected me is the time I applied for a signalling apprenticeship on the railways!

As Scc999 said, I also find climbing walls a right pain to follow some colour routes (blue/purple, orange/red/yellow, green brown) especially if the holds are older or chalk covered. I couldn’t tell the difference between the green and brown pencils in the school pencil sets and had an art teacher acuse me of taking the piss for not following the colouring guide at one point. Apparently I’m not allowed to join the airforce or police either (don’t think they’d take a 45 yo teacher anyway). I has been a source or general hilarity for my wife and children at times also, such as when i bought a black tie for a funeral and came home wearing a dark green tie.

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRF2Nu69x-g[/video]

I’m colour blind with all of the above too. Often get asked what colour is the sky/grass etc. Then get accused of being a fibber as I know lol.

Only real thing I struggle with is buying clothes, often ask one of the sales assistants the colour of something I’m buying just in case it’s something garish (again). Really wanted to join the Police but obviously couldn’t.

Oh and some wiring, I’m ok with 3 phase as it’s generally numbered but it can be a tad confusing on some of the panel work!

Oh and red/green fooking chargers when something is charged/charging. Why not make them so they flash/solid light.

I once sent an email to Exposure lights pointing this out but they ignored me. I have to get one of the kids to tell me when something is charged.

I got my Dad the below image on his work mug (he’s colourblind)

He knew what it said, but took great delight in telling everyone I’d told him it said ‘world’s best Dad’

Apparently the RAF felt it best that I didn’t fly one of their expensive air based toys….I have no idea what it says on that image above.

Best way I’ve found to describe to those with normal colour vision is they can’t tell the difference between a dark red car and a dark green car in a badly lit car park at night. The diffence for me is I start to not be able to tell them apart at say dusk.

One gf was convinced she could teach me.

In the great scheme of things there are far worse issues to have and is mostly been a source of amusement.

So surely there are technological solutions to this?

After our friend was complaining about her son not being able to watch the football match (solid red strip versus solid green strip, near identical except colour) I was thinking surely what you need is a little set-top box that accepts an HDMI signal, replaces all the green with purple for example (or applies the Daltonize algorithm) and outputs an HDMI signal.

Not ideal, but would certainly make the football watchable.

Longer term I suppose this could be done on-the-fly in Google Glass instead.

This site helps explain to non colourblind people precisely what the world looks like to us.

http://www.colourblindawareness.org/

I’m Protanopic, showed my mum a few months ago, she was staggered by the difference – there are pages to compare various images – she was very upset at what I had had to struggle with, but as I have never not been coloublind it’s not an issue for me.

However, it is a real **** when you start to look at the jobs that rely on colour vision. Not only that, not having someone to tell you your blue cords are purple and you look like Robin Hood in all green when you had no idea, is a bit of a pisser too.

The only time its ever really affected me is the time I applied for a signalling apprenticeship on the railways!

Interesting, my colour blindness is very bad, however I’m a licensed signalling principle design engineer…

Worst things I find are people who say ‘yes, I think I’m a bit colour blind too’ and choosing bananas.

rogerthecat – thanks for that link! I’ve spent the last 13yrs trying to tell my wife it’s probably a bit like turning the colour down on your TV

I’m Red/Green/Blue, which makes clothing choices and toilet door selection the most exciting options….. And not careering through red lights on junctions like some people think.

After our friend was complaining about her son not being able to watch the football match (solid red strip versus solid green strip, near identical except colour) I was thinking surely what you need is a little set-top box that accepts an HDMI signal, replaces all the green with purple for example (or applies the Daltonize algorithm) and outputs an HDMI signal.

I struggled a lot when I used to try and play Call of Duty/football etc online as I couldn’t tell between different team players. There is a colour blind setting on Call of Duty but it didn’t make any difference for me.

There is also the iDaltonizer app for iOS devices that can shift colours to simulate colour blindness from a live image, and also shift them to help the colour-blind see the differences they miss.

it is aproblem for me as the only jobs I’ve ever wanted to do I couldn’t. Failed medicals for RAF (flying) Met Police and London Fire Brigade. Although interestingly lots of police forces have now removed colour site rules……

I also got a right bollocking form a primary school teacher for colouring the sky in purple rather than blue.

I struggled a lot when I used to try and play Call of Duty/football etc online as I couldn’t tell between different team players.

Yeah she mentioned her sons difficulty with computer games too – but I think the same thing could work – a set top box that tweaks the video signal to enhance the hues/contrasts you need.

If it was done properly it could be configured to your own particular correction and left inline so it could be turned on and off depending on who was using the TV/PC/Console.

Fascinating thread, thanks.

One thing I never understood, when people say they’re (for example) red / green colourblind, I’ve heard it described as though both colours appear as a shade of mucky grey. Why aren’t they then red / green / mucky grey colour blind?

Think I might spend a bit of time on that awareness site over lunch, see if I can understand it a bit better.

And, Graham, that’s a genius idea. Get on Dragon’s Den.

You see, I’m now wondering whether bluearsedfly’s username is actually correct…… 😕

Depends on what I’ve eaten for tea the previous evening!

Amusingly my friend’s colourblind son is also a ginger.

I’m reminded of the Stevie Wonder joke…

I always describe it as follows:

I still seee colours, and I reckon I still see them much the same as everone else, but probably just ‘turned down’ a bit. This then means that when I am faced with loads of different shades of colours in close proximity, I may struggle to seperatly distinguish them. I still see them, but cannot necessarily label them. This is all speculation though as I have never looked through anyone elses eyes.

And, by the way, you probably dont whisper in a quiet voice to ask a deaf person if they can hear you, or ask a person in a wheelchair if they can walk just to test them, so probably best not to ask a colour blind person what colour jumper they are wearing (obvioulsy not suggesting it is as serious a disability but you get the point)

My dad is colourblind and I used to love playing snooker against him as it was always good for a few foul points if I refused to assist him on browns, greens and reds!

I’ve come home with skimmed rather than semi skimmed milk on more than one occassion.

Sobriety, could you please let the rest of us in your mug joke

@franksinatra – yup same – always wanted to follow my old man as a pilot in the RAF, that was a definite no, then fire brigade – no, police – no, army – only admin (whoopee).

Then you get into areas where colourblindness has an effect on you being able to do the job properly – it’s huge – railways, electronics, all sorts of jobs.

Did you get the pencil crayon treatment all through school? As soon as someone finds out you are colourblind, out come the crayons “What colour is this?….”

@cougar – it’s impossible to describe as we have never seen the world as you see it, we have no perception of how the coloured seeing person sees the colours.

That website is the best thing I have ever seen as a way of trying to show the effect.

Colour blindness has degrees – I am slightly deficient (anomalous trichromacy). So I see colour but it just isn’t as distinguished as for someone with perfect colour vision – but I can still see the difference between a red pencil and a green one.

Some severe colour bind people literally see the world in black, white and shades of grey.

@GrahamS – maybe me being thick but how, if I am already colourblind, can colour shifting and image show me colours that I cannot see anyway. It’s all about the physical make up on my eyes so if they are unable to detect the colour I can’t see how this may help – off to download the app anyhoo. I’ll report back.

TELL US WHAT THE MUG SAYS!!

I’m not badly colour blind (no problems with chargers etc) but so far as I can see it’s just a load of dots 🙁

Never mind at school I still get the “what colour is this” whenever I mention it. Pencils and crayons with the colour written on them were great.
I’ve not done the milk thing like franksinatra but do have to check the normal/garden waste bins by checking the text if it’s not bright daylight.

TELL US WHAT THE MUG SAYS!!

World’s best Dad, obviously 😉

@GrahamS – maybe me being thick but how, if I am already colourblind, can colour shifting and image show me colours that I cannot see anyway.

As I understand it (and I am a layperson and not colourblind myself so this may be bollocks), most colourblindness involves not being able to differentiate certain hues (i.e. red and green) as one of the three cone types in the eye don’t work or the “balance” is a bit out.

So (again speaking as a layperson and happy to be corrected) I was thinking that it would be relatively simple to processing an image to swap certain colour hues out for ones you can distinguish.

e.g. on the football one, if you can’t distinguish between the red and green strips then why not simply swap all the red and green in the image for yellow and blue?

(Having read up a bit it sounds like there are more sophisticated approaches to it – called Daltonize – but I think it is basically the same principle).

Colour site tests were a form of humiliation at school, the next three kids would wait in the same room so that they saw you fail to see any of the numbers. Then, at the last stage they would chuck in a false positive so you would feel dead good spotting the number only to be told it was a number that only colour blind people could see. 🙁