It's hard to understand what colour blindness is like if you don't have it. As a result, many websites, applications and videos on the internet are devoted to understanding it, documenting it and explaining it.
These videos often go viral as it seems that colour blindness has permeated our daily digital lives with one of the most popular social networking websites – Facebook – being designed in certain shades because of the founder's colour blindness. Moreover, one in ten people on the planet is affected by some form of colour blindness.
The video above by Mind Warehouse explains the history of colour blindness, an inherited but rarely acquired affliction.
It also shows images from the Rapkin's polychromatic test which are used by ophthalmologists to determine whether a patient is colour blindness. Patients are asked to say aloud symbols that are formed using different shades of colours.
For example, you should be able to see the numbers nine and six in the picture below. It is visible to everyone regardless of whether they have or do not have colour blindness.
In this picture, people who cannot distinguish shades of red or green, will see a five. The rest will see nine.
If you do end up discovering that you have a form of colour blindness, check again first: Real confirmation can come only from an ophthalmologist. However the video also offers plenty of consolation.
Lots of colour-blind people have not just done well despite the condition, some have even thrived because of it. In the second World War, the American Air Force preferred colour-blind pilots because they did not see green and could see through camouflage.
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