Back to School Blog: Color Blindness -- Parents Be on the Lookout for this Unseen, Under-Recognized Disability

Your kids are starting a new school year, and like most parents, you want them to do well, but if your son or daughter has an undiagnosed case of color blindness, this disability could adversely affect his or her self-esteem and ability to learn.

I will cite my own experiences as a color blind little girl to prove my point. I experienced unimaginable shame, humiliation, and frustration the first 10 years of my life, until an astute teacher had me tested by the school nurse for color blindness, and within minutes of her showing me a selection of pictures with colored dots with numbers or shapes drawn among them, it was quickly apparent that I was color vision deficient. I knew something wasn’t right ever since I started kindergarten, when everyone, including my teacher, would laugh at my attempts at making realistic depiction of landscapes, since I would have purple skies, green tree trunks, and brown leaves. I remember asking my first-grade classmates what color the sky was supposed to be and what color leaves were. I wrote down what they said and memorized these amazing facts, all the while trying to figure out how everybody else knew what the colors of the everyday world were supposed to be, and yet that simple reality seemed totally foreign to me. After that, whenever I colored pictures, I would read the labels on the crayons and marvel how my drawings were color correct like everybody else’s. That solution only lasted the first few months of school, while the labels were still intact on the crayons, but when we were down to just the bare crayons, I went back to my psychedelic drawings, and this landed me in second grade, not only in the dumb class, but in the dumb row of the dumb class. (Yes, in the early sixties that’s the way things were.)

By the way, the term color blindness is a misnomer to begin with. To say color limited might be more correct or to use the more preferred, and dare I say, politically correct term -- Color Vision Deficiency would be more accurate. Very few color blind people see the world in black and white images. As for myself, I can see every color, but not every shade of every color; therefore I might know that you’re wearing a light purple shirt, but I might incorrectly think that you’re wearing navy slacks, when in actuality they’re dark purple. The frustrating part for me is that I’m never quite sure if what I see is correct. If, when I was younger, I had been given some concrete validation of the colors I saw, it would have given me more color confidence. I believe the expression -- color blindness – should be used for the general population who are blind to the fact that millions of people around the world suffer from this disorder, and yet, little or nothing is done to make life easier for us.

Let me give you an example of how a simple, everyday task can turn nightmarish to a person with CVD. Imagine trying to buy brown eye shadow or burgundy lip liner, yet walking down rows and rows of makeup aisles with thousands of products baring names like Burnt Sienna, Passionflower, Pure Romance, Fairytale, and Summer Solstice. The marketing geniuses who come up with these non-descriptive names have no idea how frustrated Color Vision Deficient people get. Why couldn’t these same names still be utilized, but add the basic color to the name, such as: Brown Burnt Sienna or Pure Red Romance? This simple consideration would make CVD women like myself very happy; and by the way, one out of every two hundred women suffer from this disorder, so catering a bit to us could result in more money being spent on your CVD friendly packaging of products.

The same goes for clothes shopping, A simple mention on the price tag stating color could greatly assist a color challenged individual. By the way, more men suffer from this disability than woman, since approximately one in twelve men have it. Logic alone would tell a forward thinking marketer of men’s apparel that these kinds of small changes in placing names of colors on items could translate into big bucks for a CVD aware company.

I once got a ticket for parking in a Handicapped spot, something I would never do, but this spot was unmarked except for faded blue lines, which, in the dark, I couldn’t distinguish from the normal white lines. Had I had the time, I would have fought this ticket since my disability made it impossible for me to see that this spot was reserved for the disabled.

Parents, consider taking your child or children for a comprehensive eye exam, one that includes screening for color blindness. This simple measure could make all the difference in your child’s early educational experience being a positive one.

Just recognizing that you have CVD goes a long way in helping a person cope, compensate, and feel more color confident.

A great book for you and your CVD child to read is All About Color Blindness: A Guide to Color Vision Deficiency for Kids (and Grown-ups Too) by Karen Rae Levine.

Cindi Sansone-Braff, The Romance Whisperer, talks to the dead to show you how to live well and love better. She is the author of Grant Me a Higher Love and Why Good People Can’t Leave Bad Relationships. Free excerpts of these books are available on Amazon. Call-in or listen every Thursday night, 7:00 pm EST, to her radio show, where you can get free psychic and relationship advice: www.blogtalkradio.com/higher-love. Be sure to check out her web site at: www.grantmeahigherlove.com. She was named Best Psychic five years in a row by the Long Island Press, recommended by Newsday as one of the best psychic/mediums on Long Island, featured in the Daily News and Cablevision’s Neighborhood Journal. Visit her Facebook Page: Why Good People Can’t Leave Bad Relationships.

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