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Colour-blindness
Mar. 5th, 2009 08:00 pmOne little known fact about me is that I'm colour-blind. I thought I'd make a post about it and how it affects me. Basically as soon as I mention to anyone that I am colour-blind, people instantly start pointing at things asking "what colour's this?" which can get rather annoying. When I say I'm colour-blind, it's not like I see in black and white or colours are all flipped around, I just get what I consider similar colours confused.
I recall when I was first told I was colour-blind that I had the red/green variety of colour-blindness after doing one of those tests with the coloured dots and patterns. This basically means that I get colours which have reds or greens in them confused. This is also why blue really stands out for me I guess. When I explain that I think one colour is similar to another, they just think I'm mad and have trouble believing me. Thankfully it's rare in day-to-day life that I find this condition a real problem. Only recently at work when customers have sent in smoke ping graphs had I really had a problem as the colour for 50% packet loss looked a lot like the colour for 1% packet loss and I had to ask a colleague for help. This in itself isn't really an issue, just slightly embarrassing.
The only other place I tend to have difficulty with colours is with colour matching puzzle games like Bejewelled. Many puzzle games which rely on matching similar coloured pieces thankfully have a colour-blind option which adds symbols onto the pieces. Hexic and Peggle thankfully have this option, however Bejewelled does not. This is likely because all the differently coloured pieces are differently shaped, but I still get the green and orange pieces easily confused and also when special tiles like bombs in Bejewelled Twist or multipliers in Bejewelled Blitz (A Facebook game which has recently been a thorn in my side!) appear in the games, it becomes rather difficult as they are all the same shape but are still need to be matched by colour. I still really enjoy these games but it's difficult being competitive when I will always be slower than others due to my condition.
Knowing that it's possible for people to see reality differently to others always leads to the possibility that what I see as blue could be completely different to what others see as blue. We all call it blue because that's what we were brought up knowing that colour to be, but what's to say that it wouldn't look different through another person's eyes? Well I expect considering everyone's eyes work in the same way, we most likely do see things the same as others... but it's still an interesting thought!
I recall when I was first told I was colour-blind that I had the red/green variety of colour-blindness after doing one of those tests with the coloured dots and patterns. This basically means that I get colours which have reds or greens in them confused. This is also why blue really stands out for me I guess. When I explain that I think one colour is similar to another, they just think I'm mad and have trouble believing me. Thankfully it's rare in day-to-day life that I find this condition a real problem. Only recently at work when customers have sent in smoke ping graphs had I really had a problem as the colour for 50% packet loss looked a lot like the colour for 1% packet loss and I had to ask a colleague for help. This in itself isn't really an issue, just slightly embarrassing.
The only other place I tend to have difficulty with colours is with colour matching puzzle games like Bejewelled. Many puzzle games which rely on matching similar coloured pieces thankfully have a colour-blind option which adds symbols onto the pieces. Hexic and Peggle thankfully have this option, however Bejewelled does not. This is likely because all the differently coloured pieces are differently shaped, but I still get the green and orange pieces easily confused and also when special tiles like bombs in Bejewelled Twist or multipliers in Bejewelled Blitz (A Facebook game which has recently been a thorn in my side!) appear in the games, it becomes rather difficult as they are all the same shape but are still need to be matched by colour. I still really enjoy these games but it's difficult being competitive when I will always be slower than others due to my condition.
Knowing that it's possible for people to see reality differently to others always leads to the possibility that what I see as blue could be completely different to what others see as blue. We all call it blue because that's what we were brought up knowing that colour to be, but what's to say that it wouldn't look different through another person's eyes? Well I expect considering everyone's eyes work in the same way, we most likely do see things the same as others... but it's still an interesting thought!
