Slicing the Colour Wheel

People ask me why I wear a white t-shirt any time I go paint-balling. My answer is as simple as it is always the same, “To make it fair for everyone else.” You see, with my eyes, I can pick out anything in camouflage very easily.

What makes my eyes so different? Consider the five basic types of color sightedness:

• Blind - absolutely zip;
• Tritanopic - all things are shades of grey;
• Deuteranopic (AKA colour deficient);
• Protanopic (also AKA colour deficient); and
• “Normal-sighted”.

For all types except normal, typically the hardware in the back of their eyeballs is different. The array of colors changes, along with the subsequent interpretation of them. (I fall into one of these groups.)

For “normal-sighted” folks, they are, well, normal, right? Well, in fact, they have a software issue.

You see, colors can be represented by language, be it spoken, written, or signed. You can argue over semantics, but I will simply present the following two pictures. In each there are twelve blocks where eleven are the same color and the twelfth is a different color. Can you spot the odd one out in each case?

This example was taken from a language study (in 2006 by Debi Roberson, Jules Davidoff, Ian R.L. Davies, and Laura R. Shapiro). Why? Apparently, the definition of a word for any color is simply a small segment on the range of all visible light. Red are light waves of certain frequencies and blue are light waves of some other frequencies. (I am glad that red and blue encompass no-overlapping sets of frequencies, otherwise that would be confusing!)

So what? Well, you train your brain how to think. In one of the photos, you have blue and grey boxes, but what happens in some languages that have the same word for these two colors? For those speakers, they train their brain not to distinguish between them, so they have a difficult time picking the odd one out. For speakers of other languages, they have a tough time picking out orange-green from…orange-green. (If you speak English, then that’s you, right?)

So, it turns out nobody can see all colors of light in the visible spectrum.

You might say humanity has something very interesting to work with in response to all this, but I think we have done very well. To borrow an overly simple analogy, consider hunting for food. I can tell you where the lion is hiding so we can avoid it because I can pick it out plain as day even with it hiding. I can also tell you where the deer is so we can have meat to cook. Just don’t ask me if the meat is cooked because I cannot tell just by looking at it. Really. I literally have to borrow someone else’s eyes.

So, it seems survival of the fittest is actually teamwork with both of us keeping each other alive through different means…albeit with the same body part.

Are we a petty species? Well, I could simply do nothing and let you walk toward the lion (resulting in pain or death) or you could simply feign a full stomach and let me eat bad meat (also resulting in pain or death) if either of us annoyed the other too greatly. I don’t see that kind of thing happening very much in the world today and my coping mechanisms have gathered so much evidence that I refute the notion that humans are a petty species on the whole. There is simply too much to gain from teamwork.

From what I can make of things, anything to do with eyesight seems to boil down to sharing perspectives. I mean, everything I have mentioned so far seems to make the question, “What colour is it?” almost useless since there will always be those who cannot see it, perhaps even the person asking that very question!

So that leaves us with one available alternative, “What colour do you see?” With this question, everyone can know where everyone is coming from and can contribute their two cents as well.

Today, where personal lives intertwine with the professional and digital worlds, ensuring the imparting of a perception to one’s audience is key. Have you ever tried to sell sand to a home gardener? If all they see is unusable soil and cannot see what specific benefit in what specific situation you are trying to promote, then that is a problem…for you.

If you want everyone to see your visualizations, that means you only need to do three things:

1. Ask if they are blind. (Kind makes a big difference if they cannot use their eyes to absorb your message.)

2. Use text labels. (And actually have them next to the region or item, not in a legend off to the side - which is totally useless for anyone other than normal-sighted people who speak the same language as you.)

3. Use greater color contrasts. (For example, I see purple as blue and orange as green, so purple and blue are the same to me, but purple and orange are distinct enough I can figure out your references easily.)

If those three things became typical social norms, not only only would my life be easier as a colour deficient person, so would yours in being able to tap into a much larger audience/population. That, and your colour deficient audience will be one step farther away from simply letting you walk towards the hungry lion you can’t see…yet.