How Do People Who Are Colorblind See?
The most common form of color blindness involves poor discrimination of red and green. Most often a person who has red/green color blindness sees only strong colors so subtle variations in shades are hard to distinguish. Some may not see red and green at all. More rare, are people who have yellow/blue color blindness and the most uncommon is for a person to be absolutely color blind, where they perceive the world only in shades of gray. It may seem amazing to you, but many people who are colorblind do not realize it or simply ignore it. Being colorblind does not limit a person’s ability to do most things, which is probably why it was not studied much by scientists until the 1800s. The first instrument created to measure color perception was the colorimeter, designed by James Maxwell (1831-1879) in 1860. However, the most widely used test was developed by Shinobu Ishihara (1879-1963) of Japan in 1916. Dr. Ishihara’s color charts were designed so that they could test everyone, including
