Colour blindness is an often misunderstood condition. Many assume because of its name that “colour blind” means a person can only see in black and white. In actuality, the vast majority of people with colour blindness do see colour, but they see a much narrower range of colour. It is estimated that a person with normal colour vision can see up to 1 million distinct shades of colour, but a person who is colour blind may see as few as just 10 thousand colours (1% of the normal range).
Images that simulate colour blindness, like the ones in this blog, can give an impression to people with normal colour vision what it might be like to see the world through the eyes of a colour blind person, however these simulations actually fail to give a realistic understanding of the actual first person experience.
So, what are the actual effects of colour blindness on vision? The primary symptom that colour blind people experience is colour confusion. Put simply, colour confusion is when someone mistakenly identifies a colour, for example calling something orange when it is actually green.