Interview with Daniel Flück
Interviewer: People often hear 'colourblind' and assume black, white, and shades of grey. Within the understanding that there are types of colourblindness, could you supply a brief summary of the specific types that have been found, and perhaps how common they are?
Daniel Flück: To start, with I would like to mention that 'color blindness' as a term was just a really bad choice for this type of -- let's say -- 'handicap'. Much better would be something like color vision deficiency (too long), color-disabled (sounds bad) or anything else, which doesn't lead us down the wrong path.Coming back to your question, people seeing only in 'shades
of gray' are suffering from monochromatism, which is very, very uncommon. The most common form is one subtype of red-green color blindness called deuteranomaly (green-weakness), which affects about one out of 20 males and one out of 300 females. Other types are deuteranopia (green-blindness), protanopia (red-blindness), protanomaly (red-weakness), tritanopia (blue-blindness) and tritanomaly (blue-weakness). All of them affect about 1% of all males and 0.01% of all females, except the tritan defects which can be observed only in much lower rates.
Interviewer: What do you feel is the most inconvenient thing about being colourblind?
Daniel Flück: For me it's definitely the one thing: When I have to pee in a public toilet. Most often occupied toilets show a red sign and vacants green, and I can't distinguish those two colours very well. So every time I have to pee I'm pushing down door knobs to find a vacant toilet. And I really hate that.
Interviewer: What advantages do you feel you have over the non-colourblind? I've heard that the army, at least in the United States, seeks out people whom are colourblind in detecting camouflaged objects or persons.
Daniel Flück: I heard about this story too. But that was back in the second world war and since then nobody really talks about it. Maybe if you are colour-blind you can spot certain colour nuances better than somebody with normal colour vision. But to me, this isn't really an advantage because I can't make use of it. So I don't think there is any advantage at all, except that I know how it is to be colour-blind...
Interviewer: How colourblind-friendly is the internet?
Daniel Flück: I would say the internet is very colorblind-friendly. Luckily enough we left the time of all those colour-experiment webpages behind us.
Almost never I come across something on the internet, where my
colour blindness shows up as a handicap. Maybe I don't see everything, which I can't tell you, but the things I can see and I can do are to 99% colourblind-friendly.
Interviewer: Do you think colourblindness is more of a unique perspective rather than a disability?
Daniel Flück: No, I don't think so. If somebody can't see at all this might be true in some way. Because those people use other senses much stronger. But as a colourblind person you rely on your eyes as everybody else. And everything is just less colourful and nothing else. You could also ask if having a limited visual field is a unique perspective, and I don't think so. I don't want to say that colour blindness is a disability in all cases. For me it's just something I have to live with and handle it as good as possible.
Daniel Flück: To start, with I would like to mention that 'color blindness' as a term was just a really bad choice for this type of -- let's say -- 'handicap'. Much better would be something like color vision deficiency (too long), color-disabled (sounds bad) or anything else, which doesn't lead us down the wrong path.Coming back to your question, people seeing only in 'shades
of gray' are suffering from monochromatism, which is very, very uncommon. The most common form is one subtype of red-green color blindness called deuteranomaly (green-weakness), which affects about one out of 20 males and one out of 300 females. Other types are deuteranopia (green-blindness), protanopia (red-blindness), protanomaly (red-weakness), tritanopia (blue-blindness) and tritanomaly (blue-weakness). All of them affect about 1% of all males and 0.01% of all females, except the tritan defects which can be observed only in much lower rates.
Interviewer: What do you feel is the most inconvenient thing about being colourblind?
Daniel Flück: For me it's definitely the one thing: When I have to pee in a public toilet. Most often occupied toilets show a red sign and vacants green, and I can't distinguish those two colours very well. So every time I have to pee I'm pushing down door knobs to find a vacant toilet. And I really hate that.
Interviewer: What advantages do you feel you have over the non-colourblind? I've heard that the army, at least in the United States, seeks out people whom are colourblind in detecting camouflaged objects or persons.
Daniel Flück: I heard about this story too. But that was back in the second world war and since then nobody really talks about it. Maybe if you are colour-blind you can spot certain colour nuances better than somebody with normal colour vision. But to me, this isn't really an advantage because I can't make use of it. So I don't think there is any advantage at all, except that I know how it is to be colour-blind...
Interviewer: How colourblind-friendly is the internet?
Daniel Flück: I would say the internet is very colorblind-friendly. Luckily enough we left the time of all those colour-experiment webpages behind us.
Almost never I come across something on the internet, where my
colour blindness shows up as a handicap. Maybe I don't see everything, which I can't tell you, but the things I can see and I can do are to 99% colourblind-friendly.
Interviewer: Do you think colourblindness is more of a unique perspective rather than a disability?
Daniel Flück: No, I don't think so. If somebody can't see at all this might be true in some way. Because those people use other senses much stronger. But as a colourblind person you rely on your eyes as everybody else. And everything is just less colourful and nothing else. You could also ask if having a limited visual field is a unique perspective, and I don't think so. I don't want to say that colour blindness is a disability in all cases. For me it's just something I have to live with and handle it as good as possible.