How do you tell a color blind person what a color is?

Question

if they think red is green, and green is grey and blue is purple....how do you tell them what is what?

Answer 1

Most color blind people are not totally color blind. My fiance is color blind and he is red/green color blind. I painted one room in my house kind of a lavender color, and he calls it blue, because he cannot see the red in it. He has to have me identify colors of things sometimes (example: the different color wires while installing a new ceiling fan in my home). On the first date we went on, we went to a Mexican restaurant. When they brought out chips and salsa, there were 2 different salsas--one green and one red. He asked me which one was hotter and I identified the hotter one by color. Then he had to ask me which one was what color. :)

Answer 2

If I wanted to explain color to a blind or color blind person I would simply use feelings for reference. It's not the same thing as seeing a color but would help them understand the colors in a way. Like for instance blue being cool like water and red being hot like fire. Orange screams loudly at you, and purple is a silly color that makes me smile. Green is a earthy color that reminds you of growing things, etc, etc you get the idea.

Answer 3

in time, they usually figure it out for themselves. for instance, if they see red as something else and someone tells them it's red, they know that what they see is actually red and they make allowances for it. my bil was color blind and did electrical work. he figured out what was what.