When a person with normal color vision sees Van Gogh’s 1888 painting “Roulin’s Baby,” they see it as a light green-skinned baby with clothes of the same color that almost blend into the background. But senior David Settles sees the painting the way Van Gogh intended — a baby with pale skin wearing white clothes against a green background.
Like Van Gogh, Settles has a form of red-green color blindness, or deuteranomaly, which is the most common. For people with deuteranomaly, shades of red and green look more similar to other colors, causing them to be difficult to differentiate. As his maternal grandfather is also color blind, Settles says his mother always knew there was a chance of him being color blind as well. This was later confirmed after she gave him an Ishihara test, or color blind dot test.
Sophomore Vihaan Srivastava, who is also red-green color blind, sees some shades of green as closer to yellow and finds dark reds and greens difficult to distinguish. He believes improved color blind accessibility can be achieved through increased contrast, such as using brighter reds and lighter greens.
Both Srivastava and Settles say they do not usually mention being color blind to other people unless they need accommodations in classes or others ask. According to Settles, like many people with hidden disabilities, he stays quiet as a way to protect himself from bullying and discrimination.
“I’m not going around saying, ‘Hello, here I am. I’m Mr. Colorblind, nice to meet you,’” Settles said. “I’ve had issues with it, because people are a——-. In Florida, when I mentioned I was color blind, people proceeded to make fun of and point at me, which has happened here, too. People will still point at a black shirt and say, ‘Hey, what color is this,’ knowing full well that they’re purposely treating me like an idiot, which is frustrating.”
For Srivastava, whose mother and brother are also red-green color blind, color blindness is a more familiar topic. Although others rarely ask about his color blindness, when they do, he doesn’t consider it a nuisance and is willing to talk about it.
“It’s a fun gag to say,” Srivastava said. “It’s pretty cool for the ‘name three interesting facts about yourself’ icebreaker. But more than that, it doesn’t affect my day-to-day life in a super noticeable or significant way.”
Steve Antony, a UK-based children’s book author and illustrator, says being red-green color blind has given him a different relationship with color than most people. When he works on his own books, he likes to think intentionally and abstractly about how he uses color, focusing on patterns, shapes and emotions rather than the “correct” color. Often, in books like his Mr. Panda series, he makes sure to include animals that are typically black and white, like pandas and skunks, and choose a select few other colors to keep consistent throughout the series.
He says that many things in the world often depend on red and green — for example, when he took part in a first aid training course and had to practice CPR on a dummy, where, if he was doing his compressions correctly, a light would turn from red to green. However, he had to ask someone else to tell him when the light changed.
“Red and green are actually the two most important colors in the world,” Antony said. “Universally, red means danger, red means occupied, red means stop. Green is the opposite. It means go. It means safe. Sometimes I might look at a book cover or a poster — and it might be quite an important poster, it might be a safety poster — and I sometimes notice that I can’t really read the words. And what you end up doing is just coping. You end up just working your way around it. You end up just asking for help.”
Settles says seemingly small things for those with fully colored vision, like reading bar graphs and doing chemistry labs, can be frustrating for him. Graphs that use similar or low-contrast colors and labs with color-changing reactions can often be inaccessible to those with color blindness. In contrast, he commends certain game developers for their color-blindness awareness, such as for Wordle and Hades. These subtle adjustments not only make products easier and more enjoyable to use, but also ultimately increase the quality of life for those with color blindness.
Unlike Settles, Antony enjoys talking about color blindness when he visits schools to spread awareness. Since color blindness is no longer being screened for in UK schools, many colorblind children are most likely undiagnosed. On a more national scale, he worked with Colour Blind Awareness to launch a campaign in 2022, encouraging children to redesign the Queen’s hat through coloring sheets. They then used an app called Color Vision Simulator to show viewers what their images would look like in normal vision and color blind vision. Antony hopes it raised awareness and inspired teachers to do some research into color blindness.
“I always tell people with color blindness that you can do almost anything that anybody else can do, even if you have to do it a bit differently, and to know that sometimes what you might perceive to be a limitation might actually become your strength in some way,” Antony said. “It might be the thing that drives you and allows you to kind of do things a bit differently. But actually, in doing that, you’re actually showing other people that there are other ways that you can see and experience the world, because we all experience the world differently.”
