_{How do you explain colors to a blind person? Have you ever thought about it?}

Lets talk about colors.

I never have a chance to experience the world of colors like normal vision people have. I first find out my colorblindness when I was a child. It started as me having problem to name the colors. Everybody seems instantly recognize the colors and name them. For me most of the colors looking too similar to identify. As time goes and internet become part of our lives, I discovered those colorblind test that has numbers on them. Did not understand what they are for at first, because to me they are bunch of dots without meaning. Nowadays everybody can take a colorblind test and see the results themselves, there are so many different options in the internet. I am a strong protan. Which mean the red cones in my eye do not detect enough red light, but instead respond more to green light. As a result, many colors such as green, yellow, orange, red, and brown may appear confusingly similar. And I am more likely to confuse blue and purple, and see pink as a shade of gray or white. Blue + red = purple. Whenever red comes to the scene, I have problem ^^ Me and red will get along eventually.

But , colorblindness is not the today's topic. Today I want to talk about colors in the perspective of a completely blind person. The reason I talked about my colorblindness first , because I might have a clue about what blind people feel about colors.

How can you explain colors to a blind person

Over the years, people always point something and ask me "what color do you see" after they find out I am color blind. And I mostly answer with the closest color I see. For example I most likely say "blue" if you point something "purple" and often answered as I don't know or answer couple of different colors at the same time as a prediction. And very similarly people always wondered what a blind people see? is it darkness? is it black? And the closest answer I find is , for one its not black , its nothing. How do you explain nothing.

This is the best explanation I could fine. Cover one of you eyes with your hand and leave the other one open. What do you see with your covered eye? Its really nothing, not darkness,not black, not emptiness. It is nothing. If blind people can not see anything how can you explain them colors?

Colors has meanings

As a professional graphic designer ( I know color blindness and this career choice is an irony ) I am working with colors all the time. And often I use the colors to tell the story of the piece i am working on. I use colors as an element to the design. If I am designing a logo, i'll use the meaning of the colors paralel to the company that will use the logo. We people who has functional eyes, ( well not me perfectly ) think colors as completely visual things. But I came across some definition that opened a new perspective for me.

I don't have the original source to this descriptions, they are all over the internet. I couldn't find the original source. Whoever wrote them originally did a great job explaining the colors to a blind person.

Red: They had me stand outside in the sun. They told me that the heat I was feeling is red. They explained that red is the colour of a burn, from heat, embarrassment, or even anger.

when you think about it, this perspective is wider and can be experienced through other senses as well. Not only by seeing, you can feel a skin burn, you can feel the heat, you can emotionally connect with warmth. Embarrassment is an excellent example for us to understand the color red.

Blue: They put my hands in their pool. They told me that that sensation I felt while swimming, that omnipresent coolness, that’s blue. Blue feels like relaxation.

Blue is my favorite color. I can see every shade of blue without a problem. Blue is cold, blue is the color of the oceans, wide, powerful, scary sometimes. "the sensation of omnipresence " I really felt that in the color blue.

Green: I held soft leaves and wet grass. They told me green felt like life. To this day it is still very much my favourite colour.

Green is my second favorite color. Nature , ocean and the sky exist in such a beautiful way. Green is truly represent life. Green is growth, green is willingness to live. If you leave a place be, and don't touch it, it will be covered green plants and leaves. If you cut a tree, it will regrow again from the root. Green is persistence. Green is empathy.

Test your vision here

What do you think? How would you explain colors to a blind person ? how does the colors feel like for you? How do you describe the color yellow ? Please Leave a comment