As there are up to 10% of all men colorblind, you definitely will bump into one sooner or later. Or you just found out, that your old buddy is colorblind and you didn’t know it for that long.

To prevent you from putting your foot in it, I will offer you the top five questions you should never ask your colorblind colleague, partner, friend or neighbor. Why shouldn’t you ask those questions? Simply put: They just make you look like a fool and also make your buddy look like a fool.

Those five questions are not irrelevant. You should know the answer to those questions but don’t get them while asking somebody. Therefore I will not only list those five questions and leave them up to you but also will show you, why you shouldn’t ask each question and in the same breath answer them for you.

Color Blindness: Top 5 Questions Not to Ask

#1: What color is this?
Don’t ask this question, just don’t do it. This is something you make a colorblind person feel like a fool and you can’t take any profit out of it. Somebody suffering from color blindness doesn’t see other colors, they see less colors or maybe some colors closer to each other, because they see fewer differences in hue.

And if you would think about it before asking this question you will find out yourself: No answer given to this question will help you to understand how a colorblind persons sees the world. And that is actually what you want to know.

#2: Do you see only shades of gray?
There are very few people suffering from monochromacy. Those people only see in shades of gray. But they also have problems with bright light and need to wear often sunglasses.

This kind of color blindness is very very rare and there is only a tiny little chance, that your buddy will suffer it. So every other person suffering form color blindness sees colors, but less colors. With normal color vision you can distinguish more than 100 different hues. A colorblind person might only be able to distinguish 20 of them, but still can see colors.

#3: Which colors do you see then?
All colors, many colors, less colors. Nobody suffering from color blindness can answer you this questions correctly. Some may see more, some less but none can tell you which colors, because a colorblind person doesn’t know how you see the world.

If you nearly close your eyes your vision is comparable to colorblind vision. Also in the break of dawn the visible colors can be compared to what somebody suffering a color vision deficiency sees.

#4: Who buys your clothes?
Me; who else? Yes; going shopping for a new shirt and tie isn’t the easiest thing for a colorblind guy. And it’s sometimes embarrassing, not to know if the chosen colors fit together and fit into your wardrobe. This is something that accompanies you for your whole life if you are colorblind.

There are different strategies to handle this. Either you ask somebody else, every time until you just know the pieces which fit together. Or you adjust the colors you wear to colors you know that they will always fit together.

#5: Hey; you shouldn’t drive a car!
I know, this isn’t really a question. But it transfers to the question in your mind: How can a colorblind person distinguish between the red and the green at the traffic light?

Usually this is not a problem at all. The chosen colors for traffic lights are enhanced to make them more visible to colorblind people. Some extra orange and blue are mixed in, so everybody should see the difference. An other clue which helps a lot is the arrangement: Red at top/left, green at bottom/right. All this together minimizes the problem for somebody suffering from color blindness almost to nothing.

So don’t put your foot in and make yourself a fool. Try to ask some interesting questions which can get you into a nice and interesting talk about color blindness. I’ll have a look at such intelligent questions in a future post. Stay tuned.

The reader question below points out a very delicate topic. Not everybody wants to admit to others and even more importantly to himself, that he or she is colorblind. And because color blindness is not something which is obvious and you know anyway like your height, it’s not easy to find out if such a person really is colorblind or not.

How can I tell if my friend is color blind? Are there certain colors he will wear or certain things he will do? I think he might not want to admit it, but I wonder. I am afraid to ask. I don’t want to hurt his feelings.

As written in the question, somebody confronted with a maybe colorblind person, which doesn’t like to talk about it, is in a uncomfortable position. Should you start talking about it and ask? Or should you just sit back and wait until you’ll find out anyway?

I will offer you two different ways to tackle this impasse. As I recommend the offensive way warmly to you, the defensive way can be an equally valuable path for you to follow along.

But before we dig into some possible solutions, we have to have a closer look at the term colorblind. As there are many different types of color vision deficiencies, it’s important to know what we think of when saying my friend is colorblind.

By far the most common form of color vision deficiency is red-green color blindness. About 8% of all men are suffering some type of it. Actually red-green color blindness can be split into four different subtypes. But all of those have a lot in common:

• Red-green colorblind people can see many colors but differentiate them more in terms of brightness and saturation than hue.
• The color axis red-orange-yellow-green-brown is the most challenging if you are suffering it.
• There is also a line of colors ranging from blue-green to gray and over to some purple hues which are difficult to tell apart.
• If you are suffering only a mild form of red-green color blindness you might even not be aware of it.
• A lot more men than women (< 0.5%) are affected.

There are some other types of color blindness, however they are only very rarely observable. Knowing this basics lets us reformulate the question to the more precise statement:

How can I tell if my friend is red-green colorblind?

The Offensive Way: Ask him.
I know, this doesn’t sound like the right way to you. But it’s definitely the best way. Let me tell you why and how you can do it.

First of all you have to learn about color blindness as a not colorblind person. You will find a lot of material about it on Colblindor or on the web. Some interesting facts are:

• Color blindness can occur in very mild forms which are no handicap in everyday life.
• Colorblind people often have problems to match the right clothes, know when a fruit is ripe or if they have a sunburn.
• If you are colorblind, you often can’t spot red/orange/yellow blossoms and flowers.
• There is no cure for color blindness but most people easily learn to get along with it without feeling handicapped.

If you learn more about the challenges of a colorblind person, you can offer appropriate help. You not only have to wait every time until you get asked (or often not get asked) but just help out as it would be the most normal thing. This can be a great support for a colorblind person, for example in a shop when he likes to buy a new cool tie which of course should match his shirt.

Through your knowledge about color blindness you can go the offensive way and ask him. But not only ask if he’s colorblind, he might not even know it. Tell him, how you could support him much better in some everyday tasks and how it could help you a lot more to understand how he sees the world.

You might like to ask him to have together a look at some color blindness tests and find out if he has some deficiency and how severe it is.

Color blindness is nothing to be ashamed of, there are to many of us.

The Defensive Way: Don’t ask him.
Often you really feel to afraid to ask or you don’t want to hurt his feelings. Therefore I would like to explain you some ways which might help you to find out if your friend is colorblind or not.

Shopping for Fruits. A colorblind person often has problems distinguishing a ripe fruit from a unripe or even an overripe one. If he often buys unripe bananas this might be a clue.

Matching Clothes. If you are colorblind you can not match your clothes very well. You can’t see which colors do match and therefore often either wear only few colors like black and white or otherwise wear sometimes clothes which do not match in color at all.

Pastel Colors. I can’t tell you why, but colorblind people tend to prefer pastel colors. Not always, but more often then people with normal color vision.

Colored Crayons. A huge box of colored crayons, this is some of the worst which can happen to somebody suffering from color blindness. Usually a colorblind person chooses a small box of color crayons with not to many distinct colors which are always in the same order and well distinguishable.

Colorful Flowers. When wandering around or in your own garden, if you are colorblind you definitely will have some problems spotting nice flowers and blossoms. Usually from the distance you wont see them; everything might look green to you. Only coming closer or if your friend tells you about them, you will be able to see for example red or orange flowers.

Cooking Meat. If your friend is colorblind, he also will have some problems to tell if meat is cooked well just from the color. The color change is usually to small to spot and he often will ask somebody else for a judgment.

Skin Color. Colorblind persons have problems to see slight changes in skin color. They don’t see if somebody goes pale/green and looks sick or if he has a sunburn or not.

Maybe through this seven hints you will be able to find out if your friend is colorblind or not. If you have the strong feeling, that he really has some type of color vision deficiency I would like to encourage you also to think about the offensive way and finally ask him.

I hope this tips were of some help to you to find out about the color blindness of your friend or just to learn more about your colorblind partner. Maybe you also would like to know How to Support Your Colorblind Husband which includes some more advises how to handle color blindness if it doesn’t affect you yourself but your partner, friend, workmate, …

To be colorblind is one thing. To know which type of color blindness you are suffering from is something different. Particularly red-green color blindness, the most common form of color vision deficiency, has several subtypes which are not easily distinguishable.

Yesterday I received the following question which I would like to quote here and hopefully give you some answers thereafter.

My husband is red-green colorblind, but we don’t know which type. What is the best way to go about finding out protanopia/protanomaly or deuteronopia/deuteranomaly? We’ve seen some of the test on the internet, but what do you recommend?

Maybe you are in the same position as the person described above; so let us dive in and find some answers for you.

Before I give you some advice on the how and why I would like to explain the technical terms above and set them into relation to red-green color blindness.

Red-green color blindness terminology

There are two different axis which you have to take into account. The first axis distinguishes if you have problems with your long (L) or medium (M) wavelength cones. The L-cones are red sensitive and are—if malfunctioning—the source of red-blindness (protanopia) and red-weakness (protanomaly).

On the other side are the M-cones, which are more sensitive to green colors. If your M-cones are absent or not working properly you are either green-blind (deuteranopia) or green-weak (deuteranomaly).

The other axis tells you about the severity of your color vision deficiency. Either you are a dichromat (protanopia/deuteranopia) and therefore you have only two different types of color receptors in your eyes. Or you have three different types of color sensitive cones, like somebody with normal vision, which is called anomalous trichromacy (protanomaly/deuteranomaly).

Finding out your subtype of color blindness

If you want to know for sure on which sides of the axis your color blindness sits, you have to go to a doctor for a check-up. But not just any doctor can do the job for you. Before your consultation you might like to check the following two points:

1. Your doctor should be an eye specialist.
2. He should have different possibilities to test for color blindness (check this in advance).

There are different color blindness tests available and every test has its advantages and weaknesses. If you put everything just on one test you might get a wrong conclusion. The list below gives you an impression of what tests could be available when taking your tests at an eye specialists place.

• Pseudoisochromatic plates like the well known Ishihara plates tests.
• Anomaloscope; Neitz-, Nagel- or also Heidelberg Multi-Color-Anomaloscope.
• Lantern tests as the Farnsworth LT or the Holmes-Wright LT.
• City University tests.
• Arrangement test like the well known D-15 Farnsworth or the Farnsworth-Munsell test.

Every single test can play its part when you want to find out which subtype of color blindness affects you. Different tests together will give you an overall picture and a very good and reliable result when properly accomplished.

If you have your reasons not to go to an eye specialist you can try to do some color blindness tests by yourself. In that case you have to know, that these results will never be as reliable as when you consult your doctor. You also may not have the possibility to do many different tests like the ones listed above, as they are not publicly available.

There are many places where you can buy such tests like the Ishihara plates and accomplish the test at home. But this is usually way to expensive and as you are not trained in interpreting the results I don’t recommend it to you.

On the other side you can take some online color blindness tests. Before you head on, take your tests and think you know what subtype of color blindness is your one, let us step back and have a look at the difference between an online and a hardcopy test.

1. Online tests are often scanned images. Because printed and display colors are very different and each scanner has its own color calibration, this images can look quite differently on screen. Therefore the results would not be the same and are less reliable.
2. Every computer display is different. So if you take an online color blindness test using different displays the result could also vary.
3. A computer display has a so called gamma correction. If contrast and brightness of your monitor or not very well adjusted this could also alter your test results.

Being aware of all that you can head on and try out some tests to find out more about your color vision deficiency. To get a more detailed analysis of your red-green color blindness I recommend you the three following steps.

• Step 1: Take the Ishihara plates color blindness test and if this one is not enough check out the other source about Ishihara plates test. Through this pseudoisochromatic plates test you get an overall feeling of your color blindness but not a very accurate result.
• Step 2: Take the color blindness test based on confusion lines. There are three different tests (protan/deutan/tritan) to choose from and when you write down your results you get a good understanding of which subtype of color blindness gives you the biggest problems.
• Step 3: Take the D-15 Farnsworth Arrangement Test. These results will tell you more about the severity of your deficiency. If you have real problems accomplishing the D-15 test you are most likely a dichromat. Otherwise you supposably have a anomalous trichromacy.

Combining together the results of those color blindness test should give a more accurate knowledge about your color vision deficiency. Through step 2 you should be able to place yourself on the red-green axis. Either you are more on the red side (protanopia/protanomaly) or on the green side (deuteranopia/deuteranomaly). But be aware, if you have problems with one of those tests you will also have some problems with the other one, because the confusion lines of red- and green-blind or -weak persons are very close together.

Step 3 tells you more about the severity. If you are a dichromat and therefore have only two distinct types of color receptors in your eyes, you will have severe problems to accomplish the task arranging the colors in the right order. Otherwise you most likely have some weak form of color blindness. This shows you your position on the second axis.

Putting together step 2 and step 3 should give you a quite good overall impression of your color blindness. But as I said, there are many limitations to be taken into account and no online test will ever replace a consultation at the eye specialist.

I hope I could reveal some insights about red-green color blindness and help you to find out more about your color blindness in detail. If you did like this article you can either bookmark it with the button below or subscribe to my RSS feed to get fresh updates on color blindness.