Is broccoli not brown?
Living with colour-blindness
Living with colour-blindness
The term ‘color blind’ is a misnomer. The person can see color like you and me, but they find it difficult to distinguish apart certain shades of colors.
That being said, here is how the life of a colour-blind person differs from the rest of the world -
- They cannot determine if a person is “available” (shown by a green circle against their name) or “busy” (yellow circle beside name) in a chat room.
- They will spend all their time thinking your favourite blue dress is brown unless you tell them.
- They will not be able to tell a banana is only half-ripe (green at the base).
- They will be shocked if you tell them broccoli is green — for they have spent their entires lives believing it to be brown.
- Bar charts and pie charts make little sense to them, for they find it difficult to discern all shades with ease.
- They will confuse you with directions, for the “turn left after the house with brown walls” is actually meant to be a house whose walls are purple.
This article is based on the experiences of a very close friend who has red-green colour-blindness or deuteranopia. It is important to remember that there are different types of colour-blindness known to man, and the symptoms of all vary somewhat.
The Ishihara charts are usually excellent ways to test colour-blindness. A person with normal vision can see numbers in those circles, colour-blind people mostly can’t.
Footnotes