Problems at School
Real situations where color blindness creates challenges in the classroom — with the human stories behind them.
The Challenge in the Classroom
Color is used extensively in schools — particularly pre-school and primary school — to provide contrast and create interest, as a means of classification and to provide a stimulating environment. However, this can be a significant hindrance for colorblind children, because they are not able to accurately distinguish between all shades of red, green, orange, yellow, grey, blue, purple, and brown.
Colorblind children cannot read color-on-color reading books, yet many pre-school and primary school books and worksheets are designed exactly this way. The situations on this page are real — they happen in classrooms every day.
How the Classroom Looks
The same classroom scene simulated through four types of vision
Normal Vision
Deuteranopia(Red-Green)
Protanopia(Red-Green)
Tritanopia(Blue-Yellow)
Images courtesy of TestingColorVision.com — showing how a typical classroom appears with different types of color vision deficiency.
Real Classroom Scenarios
Examples from actual classrooms that show the everyday impact of color blindness
John
John is working in his reading workbook. The directions say to draw a line to the red ball. The other ball is brown. Both colors look alike to John, so he guesses. The teacher reminds him not to be careless.
Peter
A teacher is writing vocabulary words on a green chalkboard with yellow chalk in mid-afternoon. Peter is sitting so that the glare diminishes the figure-ground contrast. The teacher wonders why he is copying from a neighbor's paper.
Tommy
Tommy ordinarily enjoys reading aloud. Today he does not volunteer and balks when called on to read. The poem in the reader is printed in blue on a purple background.
Susan
Susan, a bright and articulate youngster, was asked to pick up the blue-green book from the teacher's desk. She went to the front of the class and just stood there looking at the pile of different colored books. Not knowing which one to pick up, she started to cry.
T.J.
T.J. was very outgoing in pre-school and kindergarten. He loved to volunteer answers — except when it came to identifying colors. A lot of the colors looked the same to him; they just had different names.
Jimmy
The kindergarten teacher notices the kids during art class teasing Jimmy. The other kids think it is funny that Jimmy's stick people have green faces.
Jeff
Kids at school told the teacher Jeff was cheating during kick ball by kicking the ball out of bounds. The boundary lines on the green grass were marked with orange chalk. Jeff, rather than admitting he could not see the boundary line, simply quit playing with the other kids during recess.
Test color vision online now with a test developed by Dr. Terrace L. Waggoner — a qualified color vision specialist.
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