Sometimes, optical illusions can serve a purpose. These images might seem familiar to you; look closely. Do they remind you of anything? If you have a driving license, or attended a medical exam at some point in your life, there is a big chance you encountered these during the process. Attached on your left, and below you may find some examples of color blindness test used for testing if person is partially of fully color blind.
If the numbers don’t jump out at you immediately, if you have hard time distinguishing the colors apart, or if you aren’t able to easily distinguish at least a vague guess as to what the number is, then you my friend are unfortunately – color blind.
A version of this test can be seen used in the film Little Miss Sunshine, in which a small girl is playing with the vision test chart with her brother. He is not able to see the numbers, or tell the different colors apart well enough to distinguish the numbers. The boy’s goal was to be a pilot, so when he is made aware that he’s colorblind, the poor kid has a small nervous breakdown. As we already stated, color blindness, or color vision deficiency, is the inability to perceive differences between some of the colors that others can distinguish. It is most often of genetic nature, but may also occur because of the eye, nerve, or brain damage, or due to exposure to certain chemicals.
Before we proceed onto our next example, here is a little history lesson: The English chemist John Dalton published the first scientific paper on the subject in 1798, “Extraordinary facts relating to the vision of colors” after the realization of his own color blindness. Because of Dalton’s work, the condition is sometimes called daltonism, although this term is now used for a specific type of color blindness, called deuteranopia. Below you may see the example how one that is colorblind can’t distinguish the numbers on the card. Don’t be mistaken, color blind people don’t see everything in black and white, I just gave this as a guideline so you can understand their inability.
Color blindness is not the swapping of colors in the observer’s eyes. Grass is never red, and stop signs are never green. The color impaired do not learn to call red “green” and vice versa. However, dichromats often confuse red and green items. For example, they may find it difficult to distinguish a Braeburn from a Granny Smith and in some cases, the red and green of a traffic light without other clues (e.g., shape or location). This is demonstrated in this simulation of the two types of apple as viewed by a trichromat or by a dichromat.
In certain situations, color blindness is classed as a disability. However, color blind people have some advantages over people with normal color vision as well! There are some studies which conclude that color blind individuals are better at penetrating certain camouflages.
On your left, you may see another color vision test card. This one is pretty hard, as some individuals with perfect vision may have problems seeing the number inside it – it is 56 if I’m not mistaken.
Hope we learned something useful today. Before I conclude this article, there are some more vision test examples for you to enjoy:
And then some more… Examples below are much bigger in size. If you had no problem recognizing previous numbers, but have more problem distinguishing these, don’t be afraid – it has nothing to do with color blindness. Probably its just that your eyes can’t capture the whole image at once.
This post was written by Vurdlak, with additional help from Vernon Southward of Macro Photography. If you would like to have your article appear on Mighty Optical Illusions as well, feel free to contact us.
(10 votes)
i can read all numbers but I’ve experimented a color loss perception when you try to stare at too many hi-resolution colored patches, wich are a result of compounding thousands of nanopixels releasing a unique coloured surface. Those in a great number could drive your brain in color blindness, because i think it’s unable to concentrate on many details and thus our sight is not always trustworthy.
better to try it once
THE eye has rods and cones, one for color perception and the other for black & white. Your brain really does not make a decision, it only processes data it receives from organs. Its these that are deficient or inferior, not the physical organ, the brain itself
I’m a painter and very proud of my vision but i most be totally blind colour after this test
hodo modo
I appreciate this information, however, like every other site that’s come up in a search for colorblindness, there is no key for us that says if you can’t see this, then you’re “this color”-blind, if you can’t see that, then you’re “that color”-blind. I know I fail most of these tests, but when people as what I can and can’t see, I don’t have an answer for them.
I totally agree Tony. I am looking for an interactive test/article that will tell you what you should see and what it means if you don’t. These kind of seem like a trick or something.. I usually can see one number out of several, but when i look at the pictures used in other articles, I can tell a difference in the color if the item is large enough to substanciate it, but in text or smaller objects I can see no difference. HOW confusing! If I can’t understand what exactly it is that I’m not seeing, how can I explain that!??! & I really hate the “what color is his hat, what color is her shirt game!!!”
The top one is eighter a 2 or a 5
Okay so my friends sometimes make fun of me because I have poor distinction between colors at times, and now I finally find out that I’m colorblind. Okay, well they can see some of what I can’t, but according to this I can see some of what they can’t. =]
i may be color blind because i sometimes confuse red and green
Is the one before the last supposed to resemble something? It’s just random lines of color drawn through the picture without actually creating a figurine (naturally i could see all the others perfectly, just asking :P)
ivan: i dont know for sure, im only 13, but id say youre red-green color blind. i learned about that kind of color blindness in 6th grade. people who are red-green color blind may confuse the two colors because theyre both somewhat brown.
the second image directly above the red apples, all i see is gray swirls. im worried. am i colorblind?
i don’t think so ang that’s all i see aswell and i have pretty good eye sight
Ang, what I see two above the red apples is a green number 10 on the left.
The gray circle on the right demonstrates how some people see the varying shades but don’t differenciate the number.
It, the gray circle, has no number; the paragraph above the circles explains.
My eyes hurt from looking at all these!
John R. Carlisle
It would be helpful if there was a key. I noticed a couple that appear to be to distinguish between different types of colorblindness … or possibly to remove some frustration from the testee, since people who are colorblind might see a figure, but not the same figure that non-colorblind people would see. The lower left one in the square of four figures near the top, for example, might appear to be an L if you have a particular type of colorblindness, but an E if you do not. Also, the lower left one in the set of six circular figures (just above the two large circular ones at the bottom) has a pretty obvious (to me) 71, but on closer inspection that 1 is really a 4.
Finally, if that second-from-the-bottom one is supposed to be a letter or number, I must be colorblind in some way. What I do see is a kind of serpentine reddish-orange path, with some blue-green “shortcuts” across a couple of the loops. (Also, the serpentine path appears to have a small interruption at the top center.)
I think I got all those, but it would be nice if there were answers somewhere so I could check (and feel smug lol)
I am very colorblind and it has always been an interesting thing to people who discover it. First question (always) “What color is this?” and then point at an article of clothing. Most people assume it means I see black and white…not so. Here is a website that explains deeper and helps people with full color vission “see” with color defect. colorvisiontesting.com/
I am an artistic person and it often hinders me and I need the assistance of another person; also when I learned to drive I had to memorize the order of the stop lights. My brother is also colorblind and could not be a pilot as he wished, however, he was a top Master Sgt. in the Air force. By no means is it a handicap…it just makes things interesting.
Confusing red and green of traffic lights? Whoever wrote this must not have a color DEFICIENCY. Color BLINDNESS means you see the world in Black and White, which is extremely rare.
Anybody who is red/green colorblind will tell you that it’s not the position of the stoplights that tells them they are red green or yellow. It’s the color of the light being vivid red, vivid green, and yellow.
My source? I’ve had a red/green color deficit for 24 years… aka my entire life.
People who do not have a color deficiency shouldn’t try to explain it to people who do not, because you will NEVER see the world as a color deficient person sees it, therefore you will never be able to explain to somebody your crappy crackpot information.
And it is a physical problem of the eyes. It is not a psychological problem or it would be treatable. It is a physiological problem.
It is hard to not be able to see the world like everyone else, i just wish i could be normal like most people but i cant, because i am colorblind, i need help but no one can help because i am colorblind, it is very hard to cope with my disorder, i cant even tell what the color of these words i am writing, if you dont have this disorder YOU have no idea how hard it is, so stop crying about your life and start crying about mine because i am colorblind.
they do the number ones to us at school
You should be aware that those “color blindness” tests were done away with.
I used to drive school buses and those “tests” were part of a D.O.T. (dept. of transportation) required physical.
The problem that was discovered is that they were not a true test of color blindness and much as they were a pattern recognition test. It came out that there wasn’t a problem seeing the colors or determining what the colors were.
The problem was one of perceiving and distinguishing the numbers within the patterns.
So even non-color blind people (such as myself) could not clearly see the number patterns.
i am so color blind, it ain’t right. i hate it, i argue with people nonstop about what color it really is. i’m a female with colorblindness, rare and usually unhead of. people look at me different and ask can you see this color and point to something, i have to say i can see it, what color is it to you though? cuz i don’t wanna make a fool of myself… like usual.
I found out that I was clrblind when I was about 4, I’m only 11 now but every test I have taken I failed, onclding this one. My dream was to becke a pilot but it appears that that will nevr happen.