Color Vision

New T-Shirt: I'm colorblind. What's your excuse?

Everybody needs a little plausible deniability.  My daughter Chelsea took page from Jake Blue's play book and suggested another good reason for proclaiming your innocence.

The front of the shirt reads "I'm colorblind. What's your excuse?"

Click here to get one.

And while we're talking about Jake Blues, here's the inspirational quote:

"...I ran out of gas. I, I had a flat tire. I didn't have enough money for cab fare. My tux didn't come back from the cleaners. An old friend came in from out of town. Someone stole my car. There was an earthquake. A terrible flood. Locusts. IT WASN'T MY FAULT, I SWEAR TO GOD!" --Jake Blues (1980).

The Army Of Four

Guest post by Zack Ybara

It's been said that all dogs are totally color blind, and that they see the world in black-and-white.

 

Not so, says Dave.

 

Dave is the fourth member of the Army Of Four, a real-life pack of four Siberian Huskies who blog about their adventures, thoughts, and interests. Dave and his friends, Stormy, Amber, and Zim, frequently take time to keep us up to date with trends, our troops, and their friends around the world.

 

Dave, or The Deeve, as he likes to be called sometimes, happens to be a Guide Dog For The Color Blind. He helps Mom (a biped) pick out fabrics, tiles, and pavers, and is something of a design consultant in Mom's Quilt Studio. Just recently, they’ve expanded their repertoire to include handbags, and guess who the first bag was named after?

 

Read about The Deeve Bag, and stories from the rest of the Army Of Four, here. Woo!

Best posts from March, 2008

• Can Colorblind Individuals Make It In Art?
• Funny Slogans Wanted
• Free White Paper: What Teachers, School Nurses and Parents Should Know About Students Who Are Colorblind
• Teaching the Young and Color Blind
• How We See the World

Can Color Blind Individuals Make It In Art?

Guest Post by Kristine <lizbeth_laila@yahoo.com>

 

Visual art is heavily dependent on color, and while monochromatic art forms are on the rise, it's hardly fair to limit color blind individuals to only one niche of visual arts. Still, their condition will make it considerably difficult to produce paintings that can be fully appreciated by art critics with perfect vision.

So can color blind individuals make it in art?

 

Sure, but they can improve their odds with the Eyeborg. Christine Finn writes about this camera-and-laptop device that lets individuals to perceive color with sound, allowing color blind artists to produce works of art that can rival those produced by artists with normal vision.

 

Read about the Eyeborg in the Underwire Blog here.

Design Our Next T-Shirt

Put your funny brain to work! Submit your idea for what we should put on our next Team Colorblind t-shirt. Click here to enter your idea.  We'll drop you an email if we use your idea on a t-shirt or sticker.

Have you seen what we already have at our Zazzle store?  You can check it out by clicking here.

Link: Color Vision Store Slogans Wanted

Free White Paper: What Teachers, School Nurses and Parents Should Know About Students Who Are Colorblind

We're happy to provide a free, informative paper by Dr. Terrace Waggoner, a leading author of colorblind tests and advocate for children who are colorblind.  This brief paper outlines important facts that education professionals and parents should now about the special needs of children who are colorblind.

Here is an excerpt:

"Today, being colorblind (not having normal color vision) has a profound effect on a child’s ability to participate in our educational system. Children not only have to learn their colors at an early age, but color-enhanced instructional materials are now commonplace throughout the classroom. It is important that the educational system and parents understand the special needs of color defi cient children, and what can be done to help them in their quest to learn."

To obtain your own copy of the entire paper, click here to go to the download page.

Link: What Teachers, School Nurses and Parents Should Know About Students Who Are Colorblind

Teaching the Young And Color Blind

by Zack Ybara

Surprisingly, and unfortunately, not many people know much about color blindness – many even think that color blind people simply see the world in black-and-white. That isn’t true, of course – there are many different kinds of color blindness, and total color blindness (one in which you do see the world in black-and-white) is one of the rarest types. Nevertheless, color blindness will cause several social and learning problems if not recognized and addressed while the individual is still young.

To date, color blindness is incurable. This means that a child born with color blindness will very likely be color blind for the rest of his/her life.

When color blindness is recognized in a child, the negative effects of the vision deficiency may be mitigated by some special learning aids administered by a teacher or parent. Guardian Angel, a blogger on Effective Parent Tips, gives some insight and wonderful advice regarding the issue. Read up on the post here.

 

How We See The World

by Zack Ybara

If you have normal vision and wonder how things look to a color blind person, one of Paul Martin’s programmer colleagues can show you. He, like 10.5 million other American men, has red-green vision deficiency. A little over a month ago he posted a public service blog post on color blindness, both to show everyone else how color blind individuals see the world and to remind designers to think twice before designing something that requires viewers to discern between colors to get their point.

His blog post compares several sets of two images, the first image indicating how it should look like to a person with normal vision, and the second showing what it looks like to a red-green color blind individual. Those with normal eyesight will immediately distinguish the differences between the images, but for those with red-green color blindness, they’ll look surreally the same.

Take a look at his post on CritiqueWall.com for a glimpse into our world.