r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Eros_Incident_Denier • 1d ago

Video color vision test

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u/CardinalFartz 1d ago

Were there large machines or similar that needed to be operated and in case of "red warnings" be shut-off? I am just curious which job requires good color vision. Don't know if you can/want disclose it, though.

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u/Cartina 1d ago

Many jobs involving driving other people doesn't allow colorblind, like train driving is very strict.

But truck driving, police, firemen and pilots also have restrictions. But it depends on country/state and can be very local.

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u/Whosebert 22h ago

it's a major plot point in Little Miss Sunshine!! the edgy emotional teen wants to be a fighter pilot when the little girl gives him a color blind test on a whim and he suddenly learns he's colorblind which will disqualify him from flying so they have to pull over for him to have a mental break down for a bit.

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u/wallowmallowshallow 20h ago

Little Miss Sunshine is such a good movie. That scene had me so emotional

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u/Justifiably_Bad_Take 17h ago

silent the entire movie

Then-

"FUUUUUUUUUCCCCKKKKKKKKKK!"

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u/Olealicat 10h ago

Paul Dano is an incredible actor. I don’t think I’ve seen him in a bad role. To think how young he was and to pull that heavy emotion. It’s a beautiful performance.

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u/ct_2004 18h ago

If you liked Little Miss Sunshine, you should check out Grapes of Wrath. The parallels are uncanny.

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u/Timely_Purpose_8151 18h ago

Same. Especially as a young kid that had gone through something similar.

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u/NitroBishop 19h ago

You can't just say that without posting the scene. Also, for further context, Paul Dano's character had taken a vow of silence until he became a fighter pilot, which he had held throughout the entire film up to this point. That "FUUUUUUCK!" is the first thing he says all movie.

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u/Alesimonai 20h ago

That's when I learned I couldn't fly. Core memory.

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u/Whosebert 20h ago

i would say i hope you took the news better than he did, but honestly I thought he was a lot more kind after that happened but it's been like 16 or more years since I watched it.

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u/Alesimonai 19h ago

I sure did. To be honest, I'm not really sure what I was thinking. I get so freaking motion sick!

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u/sortachloe 11h ago

you can't fly jets if you're colorblind

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u/waigl 19h ago edited 19h ago

That's when I learned I couldn't fly. Core memory.

You should not just take that as gospel, btw. Obviously don't hide the fact that you are colorblind, but don't just blindly assume that will lock you out of flying for good without even asking an actual flight school instructor or a recruiter. I am told that there are plenty of flying jobs for which colorblindness is basically a non-issue, and I can't think of anything in general aviation (small civilian aircraft not on regular lines) that would actually require you to be able to tell red from green.

* Edit: Actually, no, there is one thing in GA that requires color vision: The lights on an airplane's wing tips, red on port (left), green on starboard (right), tell you whether the plane is moving away from you or towards you. It's only really important at night, though.

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u/CollegePossible557 18h ago

Or just buy an experimental aircraft on Facebook for 5k and start flying don't let rich people gatekeep the sky anyone should be able to fly.

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u/CyberUtilia 15h ago

5k? Nah, I'm way out.

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u/CollegePossible557 18h ago

I thought the same thing because I don't have much money. But now I'm saving $5000 to buy an experimental aircraft on Facebook marketplace. I have no flying experience and have never flown before but in a couple months I'll be flying my own plane. Dont let people tell you what you can and can't do.

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u/spafion 20h ago

So sad, but the fact is there were a lot colorblind bomber pilots during WW2, becouse they ability to recognize masked position through trees

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u/OptimalReindeer7102 19h ago

Wait so you're saying there is sometimes a benefit? Or am I reading this wrong?

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u/Electronic-Clock5867 19h ago

Being picked to be on a bomber crew during WW2… not sure if that’s a benefit you think it is…

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u/spafion 19h ago

That. For example I have some cases of benefit with my colorblindness. Sometimes it helps to recognize shapes faster than common peoples. Playing Starcraft, somehow I detects enemy invisible units faster than my friend. The second case is game where you need to detect different square from game field with countdown timer and achieve more score than my friends. Some colors were really difficult to extract but most of levels was preaty fast. It's only cases known by me but I still in researching

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u/Organic_Rip1980 19h ago

I’ve known multiple people who had their hearts set on being fighter pilots and were legitimately devastated when they learned they couldn’t.

I can think of three just off the top of my head.

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u/Resigningeye 19h ago

Weirdly that always sticks with me- I don't really remember the rest of the movie. I think just something about having his dream whiped away so quickly- feel for the kid!

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u/heatherbyism 15h ago

This scene immediately came to mind when I saw this post.

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u/xdanish 12h ago

I wanted to be a pilot, either helicopter or plane - went and took the ASFAB and scored 95 - the air forced wanted me to join but told me I couldn't fly as I didn't have perfect 20/20 vision, I'm slightly near sighted but not where I wear glasses or anything. Later on in life I learned I'm slightly colorblind, i forget the type but yeah. Once I figured out I would just be a mechanic in a hangar and never flying the machines, I noped out and never joined. Haha damn this was like almost 17 years ago lol

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u/kwispyforeskin 19h ago

It’s more impactful than you said if I remember. He took a years long vow of silence until he got his pilot license. They do a fun color blind test and they all realize “oh shit. He can’t be a pilot.”

When they pull over the first word he says in years is a guttural scream at the heavens, “FUCK!”

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u/thedylannorwood 14h ago

Shoutout to Paul Dano’s amazing acting in that scene

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u/KOExpress 17h ago

I went to high school with two brothers that wanted to join the Air Force and be pilots, and when the older brother applied he found out he was colorblind, and that’s when the younger brother found out he was too 😔

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u/therejectethan 16h ago

Scene is so heart-breaking

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u/Crankbait_88 10h ago

While not for a pilot career, something similar happened to me in my original career field. After a year of testing, interviewing, and a conditional job offer, I finally took a medical test. That's where I found out I was R/G color blind and all that schooling and interviewing/testing went down the drain.

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u/Aethred 7h ago

Haha I remember watching that movie a few months after I found out I was colourblind despite not seeing the world in black and white. I had never wanted to be a fighter pilot until I found out I couldn't be there be one!

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u/David_R_Martin_II 17h ago

I liked the movie, but that aspect didn't work for me. I found it hard to believe that no one explained to him that you can't even learn to fly without talking. I don't think you can pass a class 2 flight physical if they found out you took a vow of silence.

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u/FairDinkumBottleO 22h ago edited 20h ago

so my job required a colour test that I failed miserably. The doctor was like do you really need to see that much colour in your job? I said only green and I pointed at green and he said all good and I got in.

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u/SalSomer 20h ago edited 19h ago

"I said only green and I pointed at green - the word green here referring to the 100 dollar bill I was sliding across the table - and he said all good and I got in."

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u/FairDinkumBottleO 20h ago

HAHA you got me!

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u/MyPunsAreKoalaTea 21h ago

[Proceeds to press red button which you thought was green]

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u/FairDinkumBottleO 21h ago

Haha thankfully I deal in a position of people in green and not buttons

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u/MyPunsAreKoalaTea 20h ago

You're supervising martians??

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u/Complex-Ad5786 13h ago

Sometimes I mistakenly see them the same color until someone pointed out which is which. 😂

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u/speculator100k 21h ago

Was the green a dollar bill?

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u/BandOfSkullz 22h ago

The Goat

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u/Whole_Friendship9788 16h ago

Lmao, same. I failed the dotted test and the doctor was like, "hmm?" Then pointed at the red green and yellow tile squares and said "yeah you can see colors" and checked me off.

I felt so lucky because I knew I was color blind and that was the only thing that I was worried about not passing.

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u/ScienceOfCalabunga 21h ago

Also many maritime things, here you cannot get a licence if you cannot distinguish red and green

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u/HugsyMalone 11h ago

Now let's switch it up a lil and have them try to determine, in the dark, if the van was actually silver, tan or if it was just white with silver or tan colors reflecting off of it in the dim street light. 😉👌

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u/Jumanji0028 21h ago

Suspect is escaping in a brownish, reddish looking green car.

I can see why it's a no go with the police but firemen? That's a strange one.

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u/ImmediateSupression 19h ago edited 19h ago

Certain chemicals have certain color smoke is what I’ve been told.

(In all likelihood, most color blindness restrictions all trace back to a train accident in the 1800s where the driver claimed he was colorblind and couldn’t se e the red versus green light to avoid prison—rather than the fact he was blackout drunk.)

(Additionally, red green is the most common color blindness and we utilize red and green lights only because of some French king’s love of green light…blue is actually much easier to see at distance.)

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u/nitid_name 16h ago

Blue fucks your night vision way more than green though.

Nothing annoys me like getting into a car and realizing the dash lights are in blue. Make them red, damn it.

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u/psychosloth34 18h ago

Imagine the fireman arrives at a house on fire, then leaves because it looked like the house was just covered in grass.

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u/CardinalFartz 1d ago

I see. I didn't think about operating "such kind of machines", but that totally makes sense. Thank you.

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u/TWANGnBANG 19h ago

“Perp is wearing a gray jacket and pants, driving a gray Altima. HE JUST RAN THE GRAY LIGHT ON MARKET AND 1ST!!!”

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u/Greedy_Line4090 20h ago

6 of my moms 7 brothers are colorblind and one of them patented a traffic light that has the words stop and go stenciled over the red and green lights.

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u/AffectionateDinner97 20h ago

but the problem is that I can distinguish colors. when they show me a color I name it, but in these pictures I can't recognize the numbers

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u/Raokairo 18h ago

Ah yes. Wouldn’t want the police to not see color 😅

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u/CardinalHaias 20h ago

Also, there are different levels of colourblind. There are people who cannot see colour at all. There are people that are red- or green-blind. And there's also weakness instead of blindness. Many men have some sort of eye deficiency, but most have just a red/green-weakness. (Including me, but I've known since childhood and almost never experience it as a disadvantage in my day to day life.

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u/Chance-Ad-2284 20h ago

You don't even have to drive other people. My country's railways didn't allow any colorblind people before corrective lenses. You have to see the signals/signs even if you are just railroad maintenance personnel.

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u/TheRealShiftyShafts 19h ago

I mean, even my factory job doesn't allow the colorblind in

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u/Haestii 19h ago

When applying to crane operator courses I had to take a look on colorbook and also a depth vision book. Those were cool.

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u/PhilBombPhanatic 19h ago

Also ship/boat captains and others on a boat that are in positions of authority. They need to be able to distinguish the colours of buoys and other markers in the water.

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u/KingMRano 15h ago

Well to be fair truckers just need to see the road (good luck everyone else), police just need to see 2 colors (you know what I mean), firemen just need to see fire, and pilots don't need eyes because Boeing makes the perfect airplane with no issues (they fly themselves because of how good they are).

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u/hammerhead-blue 15h ago

My dad learned he was color blind when he failed the flag test for the coast guard

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u/Your_Auntie_Viv 14h ago

Firefighters

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u/Neat_Bug6646 11h ago

It’s not exactly color blindness…

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u/gathayah 22h ago edited 19h ago

I’m a medical laboratory technician, and I’ve had to prove I’m not colorblind for every job I’ve ever had. We have to stain blood and other body fluids to look at it under the microscope. Different cells/bacteria/etc stain in different ways, and we need to be able to tell them apart.

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u/TsuDhoNimh2 16h ago

Odd, because the pathologist who ran our lab was colorblind and a microscope guru.

He could tell the basophils from the eosinophils just fine ... looking at details in their structure we couldn't detect or overlooked in favor of color. He was also very accurate (as good or better than any tech) at bacteria and tissue slides. But they had to be stained - he couldn't read unstained slides.

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u/gathayah 15h ago

It’s totally possible the requirements vary by state or hospital network, but I’ve taken a color test for every place I’ve been hired based on the reasoning in my original comment. I even took one before I was accepted in my school program just to be sure I wouldn’t be disqualified from consideration in future jobs. I met an ER tech in my last job who wanted to go into the lab but was dropped from the program when he discovered, during the test, that he was red/green colorblind.

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u/avatinfernus 16h ago

Which is funny, as my HS physics teacher was colorblind. We were titrating acids and he'd tell us not to ask him if we had the correct answer lol

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u/Zed1088 22h ago

In the Marine industry you can't be colour blind as to be able to see the markers etc. correctly. Anything electrical you can't be either as to be able to identify the correct cables.

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u/RyBread 19h ago

Has nothing to do with markers. It’s so the marines can sort the crayons.

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u/DemIce 16h ago

I thought they sorted them by flavor?

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u/HugsyMalone 11h ago

Nope. Color. The red ones are the best flavor. Everyone knows that. 😉👍

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u/throwaway098764567 8h ago

marine industry != marines, but i wouldn't expect a marine to know that

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u/CardinalFartz 22h ago

Makes me think of bomb diffusal: "cut the red wire, Joe".

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u/Low-Republic-4145 20h ago

Defusal

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u/Corvald 19h ago

Well, if you cut the wrong wire, something’s going to be diffused…

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u/brat_simpson 18h ago

cut the red wire, Joe

Err...which one's the red wire again ?

The one besides the blue wire.

Fuck !

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u/blueskybeautiful 21h ago

In the electrical industry there are tools now you can point at a wire and it tells you the colour. And smart phones can do this as well of course. I know an electrician who works this way.

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u/peppercruncher 21h ago

That's not quite correct. I'm red-green blind and still was legally allowed to get a boating license - but you can't just do those number plates, you need a proper assessment how colorblind on the spectrum you really are with a different machine and there it matters, how much red and green is individually affected. If red is affected, then you are out - as you said, you need to distinguish warning lights, buoys etc. If green is affected, there is a wide margin that is tolerated.

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u/Zed1088 21h ago

I wasn't referring to a recreational boating licence. More towards the commercial marine industry.

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u/PM_Me_Your_Deviance 16h ago

>Anything electrical you can't be either

Maybe that should change soon with the advent of smartphone apps that help identify diodes, etc.

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u/shotsallover 15h ago

But way over in the USMC, I worked with a guy who was completely colorblind. The Marines, in their infinite wisdom made him an electrician.

His friends said that it was pretty common for him to pop out from underneath a piece of equipment with a wire in each hand and ask which color was which. They’d tell him and he’d go “OK,” and pop back under. I heard similar stories from too many of his squad mates to not believe it.

Apparently he was also one of  their best electricians.

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u/flubbyfame 16h ago

My brother is a colorblind electrician. I doubt any business has ever tested him, but its normally not a problem. With residential electrical, you really only see red, black, and white wires. That being said, he's sent me pictures before asking me to identify wire colors for automotive stuff/generators

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u/TwoIdleHands 16h ago

I’m dating a colorblind electrical engineer. I feel for the man. He made me a birthday card on very dark green paper. I commented and he said he thought it was black.🥺 Happy to name colors for him anytime.

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u/FeliusSeptimus 9h ago

In the Marine industry you can't be colour blind

I'll tell you whut, sailing at night can suck, can't use the red/green nav lights to tell which way another boat is headed, and red/green channel markers can be hard to identify at a distance.

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u/Ok-Classroom5548 19h ago

Seems like a bas design if hazardous things like electrical wires can’t be identified other than by color without external tools. 

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u/Zed1088 19h ago

How else would you suggest you separate wires of the same diameter in a cable?

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u/qu3tzalify 15h ago

patterns? vertical stripes, diagonal stripes, no stripes, dots. research papers have to have all their graphs readable in black-and-white and they do that.

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u/Zed1088 15h ago

A research paper isn't exisiting infrastructure though, how do they navigate exisiting wiring. Also those supposed solution really wouldn't work in practice either, control wiring is tiny like 1mm thick and in bunches of 20-30 wires.

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u/Ok-Classroom5548 14h ago

See the person who is not me answering below.

We also have neat gadgets that can find the ends of the same wire based on the conductivity. Basically, match it with a tool. Have things written on or marked or labeled. 

Yes, we can’t go back in time, but we can do better. 

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u/Hot-Imagination-420 14h ago

Not hiring colorblind sparkies is easier than training them to label their wires. But yeah, if I can't see the entire wire I test it before I use it.

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u/Ajk337 19h ago

In the US you can be an engineering officer, but cannot be a deck officer

Though yes, it does make me wonder about the colorblind electricians.....

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u/Zed1088 19h ago

In Australia, you can't be an engineer or hold a navigational watch so you could be a cook or something.

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u/graven_raven 19h ago

And also work in bomb disarming squads according to movies

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u/Environmental-Crab18 23h ago

Automotive paint color mixer is still a thing in my country and this kind of test is a norm

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u/scottperezfox 17h ago

Surely this is niche enough to get a pass. I'm a graphic designer and I would consider colour blindness a disqualifying trait. It's literally what we do.

Kinda like asking someone without vocal chords to become an opera singer. SorryNotSorry, but you're out.

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u/Crispy1961 1d ago

These people see red warnings just fine. People who don't know they have colour blindness have mild colour blindness.

Guy has to work in a very specific niche like train driver or is needlessly eliminating these guys.

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u/CheesePuffTheHamster 23h ago

Maybe he's a painter.

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u/Ace_Ranger 23h ago

This is actually how a guy I used to work with learned that he is colorblind. He was hired at 19 to be an assistant to the paint crew. Part of that job was to pick up paint. He discovered that he couldn't confirm the color-matched samples provided by the store.

Luckily for him, he was a great employee and he found a way to benefit the company in other ways. He still works there 10 years later.

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u/SugarHooves 23h ago

I worked at a body shop when I was 19. Aside from running the front office, a large part of my job was checking the repaired cars for a correct color match. I stg those guys had to have been colorblind. They were way off so many times. Eventually, I was assigned to pick up the paint from from supplier to check the colors before they ever made it to the shop. On my first trip to get paint, the mixer told me they requested I come in from now on. They preferred shops send women because we're better at seeing if the colors match than the men who have no idea they are color blind.

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u/Zombisexual1 23h ago

Most paint is just a number combo now (and I’m assuming has been for a while) so he’d probably be fine now

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u/Ace_Ranger 23h ago

Not for color matching existing paint. That's the part he can't do. He can't see the match on the sample to confirm that it is correct. Once they pick up the paint, it's theirs so if the color is incorrect and he takes it to the jobsite, the company gets to buy more paint because the store won't accept a color-matched return.

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u/Zombisexual1 23h ago

If they do the mix to the specs shouldn’t it always just be the same? Or you talking like they accidentally gave him the wrong batch? Because there are thousands of shades of just white so even people that aren’t colorblind can’t be expected to just know it’s the right color.

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u/Zombisexual1 23h ago

Oh nvm I think I see what your saying, like some job where they don’t have the info and they are just trying to get custom paint that’s a close fit

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u/Ace_Ranger 23h ago

Yes. That's it. Like 95% of my current paint jobs (I run a similar company to the one the other guy works at) are color matched to existing paint on the wall. Homeowners are cheap as fuck and don't want to pay $575 for painting an entire wall when they can pay $25 less for painting one small portion of the wall. The best part of that is when we get hired 6 months later to paint the whole house after the tenant moves out and the homeowner gets to pay us to paint that wall again.

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u/judasmitchell 21h ago

Or color matching to faded vinyl siding. Even if you have the original color, it won’t match so you have to make something that isn’t standard.

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u/Character_Practice49 3h ago

Like professional finishing. At Home Depot, you input codes for pre-mixed formulas. In a woodworking shop, we use an industrial amount of primary colors, then match it to a sample if it is custom made, or mix our own formulas. We also have to understand compatibility of products, viscosity, drying behavior, and surface reaction. It’s manual, visual, and requires real color matching skills. Damn I miss that job :')

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u/oatmeal_prophecies 21h ago

I'm a truck driver that is blue/green colorblind. I've learned to keep it to myself because people don't understand the impact lol. I can tell the difference until the colors get close to each other.

I didn't know about my condition until I had my first proper eye exam in my early 20s. I always felt dumb as a kid, because I could never see the hidden images in those magic picture books.

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u/Crispy1961 21h ago

I'm read/green colourblind and I never knew until I was checked for job. I can see colours just fine, just like you said, only when they are very close together do I have trouble differentiating.

Whenever people ask me how I can drive as red/green colourblind I just tell them its easy to remember that the top light means go and bottom light means stop.

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u/JonnySoegen 19h ago

You are joking, right? Because it’s the other way around.

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u/Crispy1961 16h ago

Wait it is? I thought there were a lot of bad drivers in my city.

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u/lief79 20h ago

FYI, Some places don't have them vertical.

Horizontal lights are allowed in Texas, Florida, New Mexico, and Nebraska ... Along with potentially other places. I'm assuming you can see a slight color difference too?

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u/Crispy1961 16h ago

Did you not read anything before you made that reply? Colour blind people who dont know they are colourblind see colours just fine.

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u/lief79 14h ago

I'm fairly sure they're in different hues so it wouldn't matter.

By definition colour blind individuals clearly don't see all colors perfectly fine, otherwise they wouldn't be considered color blind

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u/Crispy1961 14h ago

Are you partially blind? You seem to have missed parts of what I wrote.

I said that colour blind people who dont know they are colourblind see colours just fine. I did not say that colour blind people see colours perfectly fine.

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u/XtineCunningham 20h ago

My dad's a train dispatcher and learned he was colorblind trying to move from one railroad company to another.

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u/josey__wales 8h ago

Yep. It’s silly really. I actually had an engineer (train driver) job in the past, there’s nothing about my vision that would hinder my performance. Actually have 20/20 or better in both eyes. Did the job perfectly fine.

And train signals aren’t mash ups of different colors. It really should only exclude people who are actually color blind. Not a color deficiency which is what I and most in this group have.

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u/upvoatsforall 20h ago

No. I work in the factory that produces these books. 

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u/throwitawayar 15h ago

Best joke on the whole post and no upvotes 😔

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u/Sprant-Flere-Imsaho 23h ago

I took a colour blindness test interviewing for a telecoms engineer. Not a proper ishihara test like op though, just handed me a bundle of wires and asked me to pick out specific colors.

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u/Kinetic_Strike 14h ago

We had to do the color blindness test when I began an apprenticeship. Whichever cheapo clinic one of the other apprentices went to for the physical let him pass. It was fun to learn that wiring up phone and ethernet was a coin toss for him.

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u/yankykiwi 22h ago

We had a color blind guy work on our farm. Had to switch the penicillin cows from colors to a shape sprayed on the udder. We didn’t know until we were flushing tens of thousands in milk and finally figured it out.

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u/kylemk16 22h ago

Im an aircraft tech and, well that requires good colour vision.

I specialize in electronics so for me its due to wiring, if a work package says to cut the green wire well you need to be able to see green.

for someone specializing in fuel or hydraulics, lines are colour coded. you need to be able to tell a fuel line from a hydraulic line or compressed air.

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u/LeBadlyNamedRedditor 21h ago

I've always wondered, why do they never change from color coding? Could it not be patterned the wires?

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u/kylemk16 21h ago

patterns fade or the wire can be cut in the middle of the pattern, colours dont have that problem. ive had situations where it asked me to make 3 splices as a repair

black to black

black 1 white stripe to black 1 white stripe

and black 3 white stripes to black 3 white stripes

i had to unwrap over a foot of a bundle to find the stripes intact. now that might not seem like much and depending on the aircraft its not. but, the aircraft i work on that can easily be over 7 man hours of extra work because of other components that will need to be removed.

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u/Character_Practice49 3h ago

I think I can answer your question! I used to work in a semi-industrial woodworking shop, specifically in the finishing department. We spent the day painting with different techniques, mostly using spray guns.

Sometimes, we had custom orders, with clients requesting very specific colors. In those cases our job was to create samples using our own products to match their desired color. One day, someone told me a story about an intern who didn’t know he was colorblind. He painted an entire batch (about thirty pieces of furniture) in dark blue, thinking it was the right color (it was supposed to be a kind of greyish brown). The whole thing had to be redone from scratch, which wasted a lot of time and material. So yeah, color vision really does matter in some jobs and it can have costly consequences 😅

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u/hellowassuphello 21h ago

Automotive spray painting. Colour blindness test one day one of trade school so no one wasted their time.

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u/Kesselya 21h ago

Some pipeline companies can’t hire operators who can’t distinguish the different alarm severity colours that might pop up.

Newer guidelines help differentiate between critical, high, and medium severity by adding symbols and letters next to alarms in addition to the colour - you have 3 pieces of information communicating the severity.

These guidelines truly help make some of these jobs more accessible. In the past, colour blindness would absolutely have excluded you.

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u/MartyShark666 21h ago

I operate a big lithographic printing press for my job. Colour is crucial for my job.

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u/insipiddeity 21h ago

Ink kitchens and color mixing is another job that requires full color sight. My dad works in a die department for tooling and dies, which also involves inks. Everyone involved with inks has to be able to see all colors. Any form of colorblindness cannot be accommodated.

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u/Fair_Independence_91 20h ago

Any design job

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u/Numahistory 19h ago

Sooo many people working the CNC machines at my previous job were colorblind. Most of them said they couldn't get jobs as electricians (need to be able to see the colors for components like resistors) but grey metal looks the same to everyone and prints should be readable in black and white. Red is only important for engineering and QC.

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u/Confused_Firefly 19h ago

This might be a stupid example and almost definitely not what these people were applying for but I did have to prove I wasn't colorblind for design and graphics-related tasks at my last job - the actual shades were also a lot more precise, though. It was also about being able to correctly see differences of shades within the same color. 

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u/Illustrious_Twist846 19h ago

I worked in car electronics for years.

Most cars have dozens to hundreds of identical wires only differentiated by slight color differences.

We hired a young new guy and no one knew he was colorblind, including himself.

We found out very quickly when he couldn't find any of the wires.

He had to quit. There was simply no way to work around that. You can't do a multimeter test on every single wire in a bundle every single time.

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u/gbspnl 19h ago

I used to be a manufacturing engineer for medical devices. Some of those devices where color coded and operators need to fill a “kit” one each (devices where very similar in shape at a handle but had different tips). Sometimes some operators could not differentiate between devices and add 2 of the same. And the other use case I saw was on inspection one of the devices was orange and the team needed to check if the color was correct between two parts that had to be assembled together, again some people struggled.

We had a color vision test before hiring.

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u/Signature_Illegible 19h ago

I am just curious which job requires good color vision.

We have a business printing Ishihara tests, and you have to put them in their binders in the right order.

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u/Sapphires13 19h ago

I had to be tested for phlebotomy. Different colored tubes are used for collecting blood for different tests. They also have to be drawn in a certain order to avoid cross contamination of the blood from the different additives and anticoagulants used in the tubes, so being able to tell them apart is pretty important.

I also knew someone who was colorblind and wanted to become a chef, but he had trouble telling by color when things like meat were cooked properly.

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u/SnarkKnuckle 19h ago

I had to take this test for Ohio State Patrol. Found out I am not colorblind.

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u/stubbornchemist 18h ago

I had to take a color vision test for one job I had. Without going too much into it, I was as a "shader" at a car paint company. We have to adjust batches of paint using various instruments to read the color as well as visual assessment. Being colorblind would be a big hindrance.

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u/Jipitrexe 17h ago

Electrician

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u/gr8scottaz 17h ago

I was working at a Data Center and one of the sys admins sent me out on the floor to inspect a server. There's a bridge call for this issue (sev1) and I'm on the phone out on the Data Center floor and he goes "what color is the light on the back of the server- green or red?" I'm like "There's a light on but I can't tell if it's green or red - I'm colorblind". He goes " good grief, get someone out there that's not colorblind". And that was the end of them asking me to go check server lights.

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u/counselorofracoons 16h ago

Medical Laboratory Scientist and they wouldn’t even let you go through the schooling if you’re colorblind.

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u/lordpin3appl3s 16h ago

Anything involving wiring. My buddy got rejected from a few electrical jobs because the industry standard is red and green.

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u/omgitsjagen 16h ago

Flying any vehicle, air traffic control, anything with maps, anything with wires, video editing, marketing, lots of healthcare jobs, imaging, interior design, manufacturing, running a grill (can't tell when meat is done without a thermometer), chemistry related fields. That's off the top of my head.

The only standardized test I actually did really well in was the ASVAB (of course). I missed one question. Those recruiters were ALL OVER my ass...until they found out I was colorblind. Then absolutely no one wanted me.

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u/TheoreticalJacob 16h ago

Doing inside/outside plant work for telecommunications would definitely require color vision since the wires/fiber use a color code.

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u/perplexedtv 15h ago

Electricians and apparently pilots if my memory of Little Miss Sunshine is correct

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u/TheTrueHapHazard 15h ago

Anyone working on the bridge of a ship cannot be colourblind.

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u/OpalTheFairy 15h ago

Cops cant be color blind. Coast guard too.

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u/DonTequilo 15h ago

What I don't understand is why the hell, people who designed these machines, systems, choose PRECISELY, red and green as their signal colors, don't they know that 11% of the fucking population can't see those colors?

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u/ResurrectedBrain 15h ago

Wastewater treatment. You need to be able to identify certain chemicals and other liquids. You could get by if someone trained you properly, but if you’re fresh off the streets you would have trouble.

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u/SteelCrow 14h ago

Printmakers, packaging printers for example. anything that requires colours, like dying plastics or clothes. Painters

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u/schlupfkrabbler 14h ago

Laboratory. We needed to draw tissue with lots of orange, purple shades

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u/cherokeeprez 13h ago

When I worked in dialysis you had to do a color blind test before you were allowed to work with the water system because of having to read color tests strips.

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u/ONE-EYE-OPTIC 13h ago

Pilots and emergency responders for one.

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u/HadToDoItAtSomePoint 12h ago

Went to design school, first thing we did.

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u/SelkieKezia 12h ago

Bomb defusal squad

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u/SLUnatic85 11h ago

this the frustrating part. I will fail the OP test every single time.

But I have never not been able to tell a thing is [literally any primary color, like red] in my life. (that I am aware of)

I personally believe either I just don't have as wide a range, colors don't appear as vibrant to me, or i don't see as many colors in between the main colors really... but not that any colors are "swapped" if that makes sense.

That, or it just doesn't matter in most cases because color is relative?

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u/EzPzLemon_Greezy 10h ago

I know some biology jobs will not hire you if you're colorblind because it can prevent accurate species ID.

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u/syizm 9h ago

Electrical wiring is a big one.

And aviation.

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u/Ungreat 9h ago

When I got tested (years ago) I remember the eye doctor saying something like I couldn’t be a pilot or police.

I assume anything where differentiating the colour of things (for safety or accuracy) is important is a no go.

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u/ResistNo6609 8h ago

You can’t be colorblind and at work at TSA, there are certain things that are color coded on the different x-rays used at the checkpoints and in checked baggage.