What is it like to be colour-blind?

There are colours all around us, but for some people, it's not easy to see the difference between them. In this video, Marcus explains what it's like to be colour-blind.

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Transcript

Marcus: Hi, I'm Marcus and I'm going to tell you what it's like to be colour-blind. Being colour-blind is where you can't tell the difference between certain colours. These look the same to me. But it's not just one so it can be these two as well. If you have labels on, it can be a lot easier. 

Around three million people have some form of colour blindness. 

Marcus: I first found out when I was about six. I was doing some colouring in with my sister and I came into my mum and I asked her which one of these two pens was the orange one. My mum was a bit confused by this and we, um, we went to the optician's to get tested and we found out that I was colour-blind.

I love football and I love playing it and watching it as well. As a fan, if I'm watching a match and the kits look the same, it's so hard to follow the game and it can become really frustrating. 

There are tens of thousands of clubs in England playing football every week with thousands of kits between them. For those with colour vision deficiency that means plenty of opportunity for colour clashes. 

Marcus: It was hard to work out who was on which team in the Chelsea versus Sheffield United match because they were wearing kits that looked the same to me and it was really frustrating. You can't tell who was passing to who and which team they were on.

In schools it can affect me in lots of different ways, like in lessons like geography and maths if they're presenting charts or graphs or pie charts and things like that. Lots of things are presented in colour now, but, like, teachers still aren't aware that this is a problem. In my school they have been really helpful and useful once they know.

 

© BBC

Discussion

Can you think of any other things that may be difficult for people with colour blindness?

Average: 3.6 (12 votes)

English courses for children aged 6-17

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