What would Christmas be like without red and green? No candy canes, Christmas trees, or red-vested Santa? Traditionally, Christmas is all about green Christmas trees decorated with different coloured ornaments, red, gold, silver and blue,colourful Christmas gift wrapping and cards. Sadly for a person with a colour vision deficit, it all appears as dull shades of brown or grey.
What do colour-blind people see? As the most common type of colour blindness that affects people relates to green and red colours.
People with protanopia have a reduced ability to see red, those with deuteranopia have a reduced ability to see green, and those with tritanopia have a reduced ability to see blue. Due to overlapping sections of the colour spectrum perceived by both red and green cones, individuals with protanopia and deuteranopia see a similarly-impaired spectrum of colours and are commonly known as having “red-green colour blindness or deficiency, which makes this time of year tricky.
There are, however, important differences between how the red-green colour-blind protanopes (reduced ability to see red) and red-green colour-blind deuteranopes (reduced ability to see green) see the world around them.
Protanopes are more likely to confuse:
1. Black with many shades of red
2. Dark brown with dark green, dark orange and dark red
2. Some blues with some reds, purples and dark pinks
3. Mid-greens with some oranges
Deuteranopes are more likely to confuse:
1. Mid-reds with mid-greens
2. Blue-greens with grey and mid-pinks
3. Bright greens with yellows
4. Pale pinks with light grey
5. Mid-reds with mid-brown
6. Light blues with lilac
In the legendary Christmas book How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Dr. Suess describes how, “The Grinch hated Christmas! The whole Christmas season! Now, please don’t ask why. No one quite knows the reason.”
To Dr. Suess, we say, “Maybe, just maybe, the Grinch had good reason for his complete hatred of the whole Christmas season – for the Who’s tree, when seen from the rooftop on down, looked to be lacking colour, a pale muddy brown!”
Make Christmas an enjoyable season for family and friends who are colour vision deficient, a great stocking filler is an iRo Lens testing kit – only $27 plus delivery – it is the gift that keeps on giving.
Check out this link for rebranded Christmas cards, with a scientifically researched colour palette they are easy to share online or print (for free) for friends and family members. https://www.adsoftheworld.com/campaigns/rebranding-christmas-for-the-colorblind
