When I was in primary school, every kid in my school did an Ishihara test. It was a one-off thing, and I don't know who carried it out or what the purpose was, but it showed there were three colour blind pupils; my younger brother and I were two of them.
I can't remember when or how I found out I was colour blind, but I already knew before I took the test, and while the identity of the three wasn't announced everyone seemed to know it was me. Kids ask a million questions.
If you're going to have a disability, colour blindness is probably the one you'd choose. It's had very little effect on my life. I can't see the numbers in the dots. I'm more likely to talk about things in terms of their shape or position than their colour, even if it's not a colour I have trouble with, so if someone says, "You see the blue car?" I might respond, "You mean the third one along?" And when people find out I'm colour blind they often say, "What colour is my jumper? What colour is that book?" That kind of misses the point, because the problem is distinguishing colours from each other.
Apparently there are different kinds of colour blind. I don't know what kind I am because none of the descriptions and tests ever seem to match up for me, but I must admit I've never really taken the effort to find out. Like I say, it doesn't effect me that much.
In the left-hand image, I see nothing at all, just a textured background. That suggests I have Deuteranopia (also known as Daltonism), but the description sounds somewhat more severe than my experience. I can see the numbers in the other two images (Protanopia and Tritanopia). They're both very vague, especially the middle image, but maybe that's the way they are for people with normal vision. Are they all clear to you? Hover over the images to see what the numbers are.
Just out of interest, I did a hue senstitivity test recently. Normal vision would show no bars.
So, long story short, that's why my blog theme is predominantly red1.
- Yes, that's a joke ↩