SecretMethod70

Are you color blind? When did you realize that you saw the world differently from others? How has this affected your life?

I am not color blind, but I have a brother who is. Obviously, color-blindness isn't really a significant detriment to living one's life, and I rarely even think of the fact my brother is color blind. Just the other day, I was telling my parents that they should appreciate my brother's help when he tries to fix the color balance on their HDTV, only to realize after I said it that his input isn't accurate on color issues. Viewing accurate colors is something I take totally for granted.

This morning, I came across an Adobe AIR app that allows you to see web pages through color blind eyes. It's called Chrometric, and you can get it here (Please note: it requires Adobe AIR). It's pretty interesting to browse the web as if you're color blind. Visiting Flickr was particularly interesting, as I browsed the photos and could sometimes see quite a difference!

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flat5

In the 1960s I had a friend who wanted the navy to train him in electronics. They refused because he was color blind.
I recently had the lenses in my eyes replaced. I see colors better now.

Plan9

Not useful, but amusing:

One of the black belts at the karate studio I work out at is color blind. The running joke is that as he progressed through the various color belts he had to write his name on them because he couldn't figure out the difference between purple and green (or whatever). You could call him "Blah Belt."

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Daniel_

I used to run a lab for a drug company and two in our department of four were colourblind (one of them female which is more rare as you need two copies of the gene).

Amongst other things, our department was responsible for colour checking incoming packaging items.

Interestingly, neither of them could tell you what colour something was, but both of them could tell you if a printed item matched a reference item.

As it was, we used a digital colorimeter to give us spectral information too, so it wasn't a huge issue.

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Overhead, the Albatross hangs motionless upon the air,
And deep beneath the rolling waves,
In labyrinths of Coral Caves,
The Echo of a distant time
Comes willowing across the sand;
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Grasshopper Green

My brother's best friend growing up was colorblind. I don't think it affected his life too much (as I recall, he couldn't differentiate between blue and purple), but he would have to take someone clothes shopping with him to make sure the clothing he selected wasn't ugly.

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Formerly Medusa

MSD

Quite the opposite here, I have unusually good color vision since it helps at work. I see color differences that leave other people squinting, tilting their heads, and finally declaring that I'm imagining it. I spent half an hour today trying to adjust my dual monitors at work to the same shade of white before giving up in frustration. My boss, on the other hand, is colorblind and I have to consider it when color coding stuff that he'll need to use. Surprisingly, he can make network cables with no problem, though.

IdeoFunk

Wow what a monochromatic community this is... I'm surprised that it looks like I'm the only one who's colour blind here haha.

I first found out about my one-and-only shortcoming in life when I was in first grade and coloured the world purple (as opposed to blue). I'm red-green colour bind. Not only does it make visual art difficult, but I have found it useful to bring along a third party when I'm shopping for clothes, and working in a pharmacy requires extra care.

I've already seen that Adobe app thanks to a friend with an uncanny interest in my impairment. I find a lot of people have a tough time comprehending what colour blindness is at all. 'So you can only see black and white?', 'So you can't see any red or green???', or who could forget that precious gem: 'What colour is this?, or this??, or this???, or this????, etc. (how I loathe this question)'. Basically my view of this condition is that the spectrum of light visible to me is not as detailed as it is for somebody with normal sight. Everything is still relative, however, being able to distinguish between colours of similar quality is much more difficult. I believe I'm a deuteronope, I'm not entirely sure.

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Grancey

Not color blind but I'm helpless when it comes to distinguishing between black and navy. Red sorts my socks on occasion, but most of the time I try to find the brightest daylight coming in and spread all the socks out to maybe see the difference. While shopping he always has to tell me if it's black or navy.

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Lucifer

Colour blindness is one of the barriers to working on ships. You can't qualify for a mate's license if you are colour blind. I'm not colour-blind, but I get tested for it regularly in my yearly physical exam as part of a government requirement, which is stupid cause according to my doctor, the chances of someone developing colour blindness is about 1,000,000,000 to 1.

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warrrreagl

I'm quite sure this is the only reason she keeps me around. If it weren't for me, she'd go strutting around every day with one black sock and one blue one. If she ever reaches the point in her life where she just doesn't care about that, I'm screwed.

On the other hand, I have sort of a psychological color blindness. What that means is that I can physically SEE the difference in all the colors, but I just don't care. They all have the same emotional impact on me, which is mostly nil. Grancey is constantly asking me which color I like better between two different things, and I have no answer.

"Should I wear the orange shirt or the purple one," she will ask, holding up both shirts.

Should wear? Should wear? Using what criteria? If she were going to a college football game, I could help with that. Otherwise, I got nothing. Having no clue whatsoever which color she "should" wear, I mentally flip a coin and say, "The purple one."

Then, she throws me a puzzled look and says, "Really?!? I though you would have picked the orange one..."

At that point, she will go upstairs and put on the orange one. It's as if she needs to hear what I think so she can safely go in the opposite direction. Usually, I just roll my eyes when her back is turned, and think, "That question is going ot get me seriously hurt someday."

At least, she has learned that although I may be able to physically sort her socks, there's no way in hell I could tell her which color looks better.

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ironpham

I used to play pool a lot and there was this guy that regularly played with me and my buddies. And, for a while, I would get a little annoyed because before and after every shot, he would have to lean in and look at each ball to see what it was.

After a while, I asked, "What's the deal man? Haven't you memorized the colors yet?" Turns out, he was color blind. His name was Kramer, which I found very amusing.

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