Just found out that my son is red/green colour blind.

What does that mean for him?

There was a post the other month about colourblindness.
Experiences seemed to be pretty mixed but many folk didn’t find it an issue at all.

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/colour-blind-what-issues-do-you-have

It varies a lot I think. I’m somewhat red/green, and what it mostly means is that for several years, my favourite tie often clashed with my shirt because I thought it was a nice metallic grey and it’s actually fairly bright green. Unless people are lying to me. Sometimes I come across things that I should be able to distinguish but can’t- terrible work documents mostly. It’s never had a big impact on me.

IIRC I was told I’m not allowed to drive a train though.

So I suppose, the question is how colourblind is he. But it’s not instantly something to be concerned about.

Can’t be an electrician.
That’s the only one I know.

Can’t be a fighter pilot 🙁

(BTW, I joke about it because I’m red/green colour blind. The only problem I’ve really ever experienced is not being able to do those stupid colour blindness dot tests! I also know a fair few others who are colourblind and it’s not held any of them back either.)

Like mrblobby – the only practical thing I’ve ever noticed is the inability to do the colour blindness dot tests…

as said in the other thread the most annoying thing is people asking you “what colour is this?”

Colour blindness is quite common, especially in men. You need to understand how colour blind he is but don’t worry. As the thread given above tells you, lots of us are colour blind, some even severely but we seem to get on fine. I’m pretty colour blind (I fail all the numbers in the book they use), but I’m fine identifying 300 slightly different coloured wires in a 300 core cable.

Reading RAG reports either makes you feel great or depressed or confused

How old is he? If he’s old enough, tell him to read the color written on the crayon before coloring a horse green or something. 😉

I’ve been red green colorblind as long as I can remember and it hasn’t caused many issues. Well, my grandfather and I used to adjust the settings on the TV and they looked fine to us, but suddenly went out of adjustment as soon as someone else entered the room. 🙂

And there was one exam in college where they passed out two versions; one on green paper and the other on brown. My friend in the class was also color blind, and neither of us knew which version we had. I also found it impossible to do Army land navigation where the points were green tape on a brown tree trunk… 🙄

Can’t be an electrician.
That’s the only one I know.

Wrong.

My youngest son is and has very successful business as an electrician.

Can’t work as an engineer (sorry, technician 🙂 ) for Openreach. However, it’s a practical exercise during interview so sounds like Samuri would do fine as I simply had to pick out the colours in a 10 pair cable.

Eyepic, no doubt he can be an electrician, but many employers would likely reject him due to risk of miss-identification that leaves them liable for the consequences. If he is running his own business he does not have this problem.

I am red green colourblind too

I used to work in a photographic lab correcting colour casts on colour work, something that in theory I should not have been able to do, but it I could.

The biggest impact in his last life will be people constantly asking him what colour things are when they find out he is colourblind 😉

Ski – you just brought back the most common conversation from my childhood!

I was told 35 odd yrs ago I was red/green colour blind – couldn’t be an sparky, pilot etc. Can’t say it’s ever caused me an issue although I sometimes struggle to see the difference between blue’s and purples….but I think that’s more to do with that some are actually very similar….than my eyes…

I do wonder if the “can’t be an electrician” thing is a throwback to the old wiring colour schemes? Ie, it used to be true but doesn’t apply any more.

If you’ve got a red live and a green earth then that’s going to give you a bad day, but red/green colourblindness shouldn’t cause a problem with brown and blue (and green/yellow stripes).

I’m colour blind. Overall its affected my life in no way whatsoever. Some things I find difficult like weirdly, I’m looking for some parts for my van at the minute and VW do/did some horrible shades of beige whereas I’m looking for some light gray parts and its almost impossible for me sometimes on eBay to differentiate between beige and light gray :S

Colour blindness does have it’s advantages too. I can usually duck out of conversations with mrs blobby about decoration and paint choices by claiming colour blindness 🙂

Colour blindness does have it’s advantages too.

Apparently some types of colour blindness mean that you can see through camouflage more easily.

Classic mutation vs genetic advantage stuff.

@HtS – get him tested so you can understand his level of colour blindness, then use the website I linked to on the thread above so you know what he is seeing. You understanding will help him hugely. I’m quite severely colourblind and all that happened was lots of grief at school from the idiots and some teachers all of whom found it hilarious but I really struggled. If his colour perception is bad, the same level as me for example, it could reduce his career options considerably.
It may also make him the centre of interest at parties where he may discover quite a few sympathetic ladies (or gentlemen if that’s his preference) who stick around to chat, a bizarre way of meeting people but it works! 😀

Colour blind and a designer (both print and web). No problems a aside from occasionally having to double check colour palettes i’ve come up with are acceptable with a colleague. The colours always work together but occasionally I’ll have picked something that I thought was green which is actually brown or similar.

By far the worse thing he’ll have do deal with is when people find out your colourblind. He’ll have the conversation 100s of times and will inevitably go:

“You’re colourblind?”

“Yes”

“So you see everything in black and white then?”

“No”

“Oh, so how does it work then?”

” *insert brief explanation of how it works* “

“Right, so what colour is this” – points to sky

“Blue”

“Ok, and this?” – points to grass

“Green”

“So you’re not really colourblind then?”

“FFS. Even if I couldn’t see the colours correctly everyone knows grass is green and the sodding sky is blue!”

“No need to get stroppy about it”

He might struggle at snooker..I did 😳

I’m only red/green colour blind when I do the dotty number test, I can pick out any colour from a fine wiring loom. It’s had no impact on my career in engineering.

a previous CIO where I work was very colourblind so we had a load of prebuilt templates for making charts and scorecards otherwise he’d dish out b0llockings for every project and performance indicator being red 🙂 we used to talk him through stuff, it was fine

He might struggle at snooker..I did

On a similar note – Ted Lowe…

“and for those of you who are watching in black and white, the pink is next to the green.”

I seem to remember watching a bit on QI about colour blindness (so these facts might be totally wrong), it seems that colour blindness does not bar you from any jobs, it’s just everyone thinks you can’t be an electrician or an airplane pilot. The only other bit I remember was that one of the numbers in the ‘dot’ books to test for colour blindness is a control that everyone should be able to read, something about making sure people weren’t faking the test.

a previous CIO where I work was very colourblind so we had a load of prebuilt templates for making charts and scorecards otherwise he’d dish out b0llockings for every project and performance indicator being red

Our MD is red/green colour blind, if a RAG chart is going to him you include arrows or similar, job done!

A friend of mine at uni was colour blind, but aside from being told he was colour blind he couldn’t really tell what difference it made, no one had every explained what he wasn’t supposed to see.

I’ve been red green colorblind as long as I can remember

Serious question… can you develop colour blindness? Assumed it was from birth?

njee20 – Member

I’ve been red green colorblind as long as I can remember

Serious question… can you develop colour blindness? Assumed it was from birth? [/quote]

Yeah, its genetic as far as I am aware. I was sort of trying to point out that I’ve never experienced what people that aren’t colorblind see… 🙂

Indeed, which was what my friend grappled with. Because no one had ever sat him down and said “you can’t see the difference between x and y” he just knew he was colourblind, and that was about it! He’d made it to 21 without issue, although he did struggle with coloured lines on graphs occasionally.

Just found out that my son is red/green colour blind.
What does that mean for him?

He’ll be fine riding his bike in town.