Question about being color blind

[NotUrsula]

My dad was a cabinetmaker. I often thought that being colourblind was helpful to him in terms of his work, because he could see patterns in wood grain that no one else around him could see. Of course, driving in unfamiliar places was a problem for him, because he could only read traffic lights by their positions -- if one was hung sideways or stacked in reverse order he often ended up running the light.

When I was in college I seriously dated a guy who had achromatopsia, which is the worst form of colourbllindness there is; those people really do pretty much see the world in shades of grey. He was a redhead, and he generally limited his wardrobe to white, brown and khaki. Boring, but he was able to avoid looking wildly mismatched that way.

 

[matthew_hull]

Those interested in learning about color blindness can read the excellent article on it at the Wikipedia. It helped me to understand why I was colorblind and how the rest of the world sees color.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorblind

 

[MariDisney]

In high school I gave a presentation about color blindness and it included a short vision test as an example. One of the guys in the class had no idea he was color blind until I gave that presentation. Afterwards he was kind of shell shocked, and everyone was asking him what things looked like to him and such. I thought it was weird you could go through some 16 or 17 years of your life not knowing that you saw the world differently from pretty much everyone else.

I have a friend who is red-green colorblind. He has a lot of trouble with video games. You don't realize how much those things often rely on color distinctions until you try to play them with someone who can't see those distinctions at all.

That's basically how it was with me. I always just thought I had no fashion sense. Then in 10th grade biology I couldn't read the slides when the teacher was talking about color blindness. I first I thought she was playing a trick on the class, but then I realized I was the only one who couldn't see the numbers on the slides.