Does being colourblind affect you?

vtmil

Hey,

The other half is colourblind. It hasn't been an issue until now, but unfortunately he's being made redundant so we're jobseeking.

His qualifications aren't up to much, and he's worked in the same industry (butchery) since he left school 10 years ago. So we're looking for a manual job that he could skill up for but so far it seems we can rule out

Plumber
Electrician
Gas man
police officer
community support officer ......

So my questions to the colourblind out there - what type of labour/manual jobs do you do?

The OH won't talk about being colourblind either so will you expalin it to me please?

Thanks for your time

vtmil

pboae

Do you know what sort of colour blindness he has? There are different types but red/green is the most common.

If he is red/green colour blind then essentially the 2 colours will look the same to him (and may look a different colour than what you or I think of as either red or green). It is particularly problematic because red and green are often used for stop/go. So on traffic lights it's not such an issue because they can be distinguished by the top light or the bottom light. But say you were using a piece of equipment and a light on it flashed green for OK or red for Danger. You can see why that would cause a problem.

It's not unusual for your OH to not want to talk about it, to him there is nothing really to talk about. If I told you that what you see as red is actually 2 different colours but you can't see them, what could you tell me about it? You would still only see one colour, I would still see 2 colours, and you wouldn't have any idea what those 2 colours were. It must be very frustrating for it to interfere in so many things.

That description is a fairly gross simplification of things, there are many different types if levels of colour blindness, and some people are able to discriminate the colours they are supposedly blind to. If you have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_blindness there are some charts at the bottom that give you an idea of how it can affect your colour vision.

wildbri

I have just returned from a very nice holiday with my nephew and his family who live in Virginia Usa. He is colour blind and he his quite happy to talk about it. He is a CAD draughtsman and seems to make a very good living judging by his very large house, four cars, caravan and three motor bikes. He's also very happy and the blindness do's not affect his life. Im sure there are many jobs out there waiting for a willing person. regards ...bri

clairewp

hi thought i'd join in this as, my dad, husband and son are all colourblind.I am lucky as mine don't mind talking about it.
In my house my husband is red/green and my son.....seems lots of colours, also any shades can be a problem to, mine have real trouble distinguishing really pale shades and if you put 5 different light colours in front of them they say they are all the same.
As for jobs my son is not of that age yet and my hubbie is a shop manager so have not crossed this path yet.

If you have any question either ask me on here or pm me and i will try to find out nswers from hubbie.

claire

ailuro2

My husband makes tyres in our local factory - there is no requirement not to be colourblind to do it, although I worked as a fitter in the same factory and was tested for colourblindness before being employed as they had taken on engineers without checking them, then when they wanted to cross-train them to do electrical work they found a couple who were colour blind.This was many years ago now though!
Although wiring these days tends to have stripes/numbers etc. there is still a lot of red,green,blue,brown wires in the equipment we work on.

churchrat

hi
lots of colour blindness in the rat house, both of my sons and me. I am a lady rat, so quite rare!! my brother, also colour blind, trained as an electrician (no, i don't know how either) and says that he has never had any problems. My dad, who has no colour vision at all was a builder. My uncle is a driver for his local council. For most of us it simply is not a problem because we have really no idea what all the fuss is about, although my husband and daughter were a bit upset about the colours I had chosen for the kitchen. If you google colour blind you can see the tests that you take at school and there are some colour altered pictures that are supposed to show the noncb what we see. don't know if they work tho!!
goodluck with the job hunting, and to be honest I don't think it will make much difference unless he has no colour vision at all.
churchrat

lady_stardust

My dad is colourblind. It seems to be the green/red type but slightly different - some reds he sees as browns for example. He was an telecommunications engineer for nearly 35 years and it wasn't a problem.

I would say where he has the most trouble is anything graphics based. In spite of knowing he is colourblind, when he bought a photo printer he decided that the default colour settings on it were all wrong, and set them himself manually. The result is photos with luminous green grass and reds that look bright pink!

hannahsmummy1

My dad is colourblind, he works as a drainage operative (getting in & out of drains all day- nice!) He has had the same job for nearly 20 years now, never had any probs as far as i know

pulliptears

Somewhat OT, but years ago I had a friend who was red/green colourblind, he was also struggling to find a job so chose no to say anything about the problem when he was offered a job...

All went well for a week or so until all the owners of the burglar alarms he had been installing all week began calling the company he worked for requesting someone come out and stop them from ringing!!!!

In fairness they kept him on, but he was banned from installing alarms