Red green colour blindness is by far the most common form of colour blindness. Overall colour blindness afflicts around 20% of the male population and of course varies in severity. Its all to do with the rods and cones in your eyes and you can't pretend you are colour blind or relearn the colours as I have tried to!
A simple test - an image made up of multi colour dots reads 'color' if you are normal and in my case I read 'onion'. It cost me a job once as a photograper for International Combine Harvesters (although their livery was red and yellow). I passed the interview but failed the medical.
Many years later when I photographed over 2,500 colour images for "The Encyclopedia of Woodworking Techniques", when it was voted one of the Top Titles by the UK Booksellers Association, I came clean and admitted to my editor at Headline publishing that I was colour blind. She laughed and said an ex BBC editor friend of hers was also colour blind.
So what's the fuss about then? None except it is rather irritating but curious that traffic lights, petrol pumps and more importantly the tiny LED charging lights on electronic equipment always use red green. I can always count the traffic lights from top to bottom (only joking) but what is a real nuisance is when i charge up my battery powered musical amplifier when I go busking, I simply cannot tell the red for green.
Perhaps it is women who design these electronic products!
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