Му life with CVD by Tony Wong

§ 1. I had just started middle school and we all had to do a series of tests. I was taken to a room where a mysterious woman handed me an odd-looking picture made up of dots. 'What number do you see?’ she asked with a smile. I didn’t know why she was smiling because there were a lot of dots to count. Once I got to about ten, she asked the same question. I didn’t know what to say, so she gave me another picture which looked the same as the first. I got upset. 'I don’t see any numbers,’ I said. That was how I learnt that I had CVD, colour vision deficiency, or, as it's unfairly known by the general public, colour blindness. What most people would have seen in that test was a number made of pink dots which they were expected to pick out from a circular field of green dots. I just saw lots of grey dots.

§ 2. I’m not alone. It is estimated that about eight percent of men have some form of CVD. It’s all down to genes, apparently, and scientists hope to cure it one day, although I can’t say that I would be keen on any gene therapy. Personally, I don’t feel like I ‘suffer’ from CVD.

§ 3. Generally speaking, people with CVD just adapt to the world around us. For example, when you get to the traffic lights, the key thing is not the colour but the order of the lights. Of course, with all the vandalism in my neighbourhood. I'm just happy if the traffic lights are working.

§ 4. Unfortunately, not everything is so clear cut. When my e-reader is recharging, the light is orange when it is charging and green when it is finished. That’s great, except that both colours look more or less the same to me. A much better system would be the one that my electric razor uses. It flashes when it is charging and then stops when it has finished.

§ 5. Life is full of little frustrations like that. Because I see green and red as pretty similar, I do sometimes put on a top that doesn’t go with my trousers.

§ 6. However, there are bigger problems that can occur when professionals don’t take CVD into account. I once failed an exam at school because a key question related to a bar chart coloured red, green and blue. To me all of the rectangles looked almost the same. Similar problems still crop up in course books and exams today.

§ 7. Moments like that aside, in my own life, CVD has been more of an inconvenience than a problem. People like me live life just like anyone else. We can continue to do so as long as people in positions of responsibility take steps to prevent any problems before they occur.