



While there is no way to get a completely accurate count, estimates say that up to 8 percent of males and a mere .5 percent of females (with Northern European ancestry, because that’s all I can find the stats on) have issues differentiating some colors. There are many possible reasons for the problem and many theories about the disparity between male and female, but whatever the reasons may be, many of us are affected by this problem. For those of you that don’t experience this, allow me to try to explain.



I was almost 30 before I realized that when people said something like “he’s turning red with embarrassment” they were being literal. I had always thought it was some kind of weird metaphor. It’s surprising how many minor, day to day, things are based on colors. What color hair does he have? What color car was it? Is the grass green or turning brown? Is that steak rare or medium? Those red/blue 3D glasses? Nope. They give me a headache because I see blurry images on the screen. And then there are some larger issues to contend with.



When I first learned to drive I had to learn that the middle meant slow down, top meant stop, and bottom meant go. While the lights don’t all look quite the same to me, none of them look like the colors people tell me they are. To me, the bottom light is an off white, and the other two are kind of different shades of red. When it comes to those single, flashing lights, I have nothing to compare to so have no idea what they are. I always assume they are red, just to be safe.



When I was 19 I joined the Navy and, based on my test scores, they decided I should be put in the nuclear program. During my required physical they did a full vision test which included some basic color testing. After miserably failing that they informed me that they didn’t want me anywhere near something that might explode if I connected (or cut) the wrong wires. While I was a bit disappointed, I have to admit they had a pretty good point.



Some years later I was working retail (anyone remember Babbage’s?) and decided it wasn’t for me. I started a PC repair shop / consulting company to help home users and small business owners. One of my driving reasons to do this was because I could build custom PCs and sell them for quite a bit less than the ‘big brands’ of the time. While building a PC is pretty straight forward, back then there were many wires that weren’t labelled. I frequently ran into instructions that said things like ‘connect yellow here, red here, white here’. I never caused a fire, but I did wire things incorrectly more than once.



After my company had been around for a while DSL started to appear in my town. I was able to get a contract with one of the ISPs of the time to install and configure DSL modems. They aren’t very complicated, but they caused me some embarrassment. When you connect them they check for DSL signal on the phone line and a light blinks to let you know the status. Error codes were not a pattern of blinks (which would have been great) but were color coded. Consider how awkward it is to call your client over, point to the little blinking light, and ask what color it is. I eventually learned to say that I needed another pair of eyes and would look at the monitor while they told me the LED color.



In today’s tech world the issues are different, but still there. My cell phone has an LED that flashes for alerts. It can flash different colors for different things, but they all look pretty similar to me, so that feature is useless. I’ve run into many games over the years where the players look the same, but are different colors. Guess who couldn’t tell them apart? Some web sites use link colors that, to me, look identical to the regular text so I have no idea there’s a link to click on. And forget about web design – how am I supposed to know what colors look good together?



If you are in IT and design anything for others to use, please keep us 8 percent in mind. Make your error codes show a number or blink in a pattern, not just depend on a changing color. If you have to use color coded wires, label them too. Making a web site or game? Offer a black and white or ‘color blind friendly’ version, too. We may be a minority, but there are millions of us. Making millions of people happy with your product has to be a good thing, right?



Author: GrammarPolice