Have you ever wondered how color-blind individuals see the world? Can’t they really see the colors as they’re known as color-blind individuals?
Maybe their point of view of the world is just in black and white colors, just like the old movies broadcast on black and white television. Wrong! Interestingly, color-blind individuals can still see the colors but they have difficulty distinguishing the color contrast of the colors they see such as bright and dark colors. So, how do they view the colors?
Let’s try to experience their POV, shall we? Take a look at the picture below. This is how they perceived the colors in this world. As you can see, four falls under the red-green category, two are in the blue-green category and there is one type that is complete color blindness where you can see no color at all. The few shown here are protanopia (aka red-blind), deuteranomaly (aka green-weak), and tritanopia (aka blue-blind).
And this is how they see food such as fruit that has a bright color like a tomato:
Cause of color blindness
Have you ever heard of genetic mutations? Most cases of color blindness inherit from the individual’s parents. Color blindness has a high correlation if the father has a genetic mutation of color blindness, or the mother is a carrier. The child who carries the Y chromosome will get color blindness.
Do refer to the chart below for a better understanding:
For your information, the most common types of color blindness are red and green known as Protan and Deutan. Difficulty distinguishing these colors can be categorized as mild, moderate, and severe.
There is a test to check individuals’ color blindness, known as the Ishihara test. In the test, 100 hues and D15 can determine the type and severity of the type of the individual’s color blindness.
Interested to try? Click here.
Colorblind glasses
However, color-blind individuals can now see the colors like us. Now, there are color-blind glasses that are able to help color-blind individuals to perceive the real colors of the world.
Colorblind glasses have special lenses that make red and green look better to the person who wears them. Most people have red-green color blindness, so these glasses usually fix this problem.
Additionally, there are also glasses that fix blue-yellow color blindness.
Even though colorblind glasses don’t “cure” colorblindness, they do make it easier for colorblind people to see more colors and see the world more clearly.
Sources: @MedTweetMYHQ, NIH, MyVision