Blind Woman Shares How People Explained Colors To Her When She Was Little, Other People Try Explaining Them Too

Most of us take color for granted. It’s one of the most important features we use to describe how things look, but you’ll probably go blank if you try to describe what makes something green. If you’ve ever had that classic debate about whether “my red is your red”, you’ve probably realized that when you try to describe something from your own visual perception, any comparison you make is… also from your visual perception.

That sounds slightly confusing already, so let’s talk about how we can describe colors, or at least try to. Recently, someone started a Twitter thread asking how to explain colors to a blind person who has absolutely no visual reference. Some of the resources that rolled in, like a blog post from someone who was born with no light perception and gained it surgically later in life, and a children’s book describing color through raised print and similes, are fascinating and poetic.

One commenter makes a great point, though: that our emotional associations with color are subjective, as is color symbolism from one culture to another. For years, designers have had to be careful with the colors that they use to market products internationally, because while a fiery color like red may put people in high spirits in the West, someone from a Middle Eastern culture that considers red a warning sign would probably think of it with apprehension.

The abstract nature of the descriptions struck a chord with some commenters who tried their hand at writing their own. Some of them are pretty relatable—if you live somewhere far north, you're probably having a lot of grey days right now—while some people went wild with the format and ventured into absurdity and parody.