How to fail a color blind test
How to Beat the Infamous Colorblind Test
Timecodes:
it can suck to be colorblind and
especially to have a clump of ugly
little dots laugh at you as you realize
that you'll never be able to drive a
train
this little itchy heart plate is often
what keeps us apart from dream jobs so
today on chromophobe I'm going to give
you seven ways to cheat your way past
the ishihara test before we get started
I have been grappling for a year with
the ethics on whether I should make this
video the ethics of Occupational
screening against the colorblind is
contentious and definitely a video in
itself certainly I have no qualms in
helping a mildly colorblind man in China
bypass an ishihara test that aims to
block him from getting a personal
driver's license on the other hand the
ishihara test is appropriately used to
prevent the colorblind from working in
roles where color vision is actually
critical to the safety of them or the
public so why am I making this video
anyway
first there is not much more information
in this video than what can be found
through the first page of Google results
for how to cheat the ishihara test I
assume anyone who's actually motivated
enough to cheat is also capable of the
most trivial of online research
second all of these methods can be
neutralized in a way so after going
through all the ways a test taker the
subject could cheat on the test I'll
also explain how the test givers the
invigilators like optometrists
ophthalmologists Etc can not only detect
but also avoid cheating and likewise
make their own testing fair and accurate
not to spoil the ending but the answer
is almost always stop using the ishihara
the ishihara test is made up of a number
of pseudo-isochromatic plates or Pips if
you are interested in how Pips work how
they detect color blindness I have a
short video about that which I'll also
Link at the end of this video but it's
certainly not necessary to understand
this video the ishihara book comes in 10
14 24 or 38 plate variants though most
occupational ishihara testing uses the
10 or 14 plate versions regardless the
color vision of a subject can usually be
confidently classified as deficient in
just a few plates depending on the
organization two to six plates
incorrectly answered results in a
failure of the test as I have protonopia
I tend to fail all the plates but if I
were motivated to beat the ishihara I
definitely could let's look at seven
methods to give you that edge number one
on the list is probably the first thing
that came to mind color corrective
glasses several brands of so-called
colorblind glasses are even and marketed
as helping you pass the colorblind tests
the most common glasses and chroma
lenses aren't actually made for helping
with testing and depending on the
version of in Chrome as you have will
probably not help much though one study
found that they did improve ishihara
scores for dutands the goal of enchromas
is to distort color as little as
possible while knocking up the
saturation which is not what you need to
cheat at the ishihara for that you need
a pair of glasses that is designed to
distort colors namely pile Stone glasses
color Max or really any maker of magenta
or yellow tinted lenses either intended
for the colorblind or not in fact I've
got some simple colored gels here that
essentially have the same effect as
these glasses would have here's a pip
that I have filtered so we are all
seeing it as if we were colorblind now
notice how this red gel suddenly makes
an unreadable pip readable
that's what the glasses do intentionally
distorting color while not actually
improving color vision the colors of a
pip are carefully chosen to lie along a
confusion line so any kind of blunt
force Distortion will generally make
them easier to see just a careful choice
of lens color is still necessary to get
the biggest effect or one that will help
with the most plates there are lots of
different glasses that would work to
beat the ishihara but while you will be
allowed to wear standard prescription
glasses during your test it will be
almost impossible to find an invigilator
that would Overlook you wearing color
corrective glasses or glasses with any
visible tint whatsoever
kind of hard to hide that method number
two is contact lenses while an
invigilator would immediately spot
glasses a contact lens would take quite
a bit more attention to detail on their
part unfortunately there are not many
options for contact lenses because none
of the major modern color corrective
lens companies yet offer contact lenses
the most viable options nowadays are
chromogen or X Chrome lenses these
lenses have been around since as early
as
1974 and comprise a single red to the
contact that you wear on one of your
eyes you may be familiar with cheap 20
red tinted lenses I even use them to
make a vampire film in University they
specifically color the iris but allow
unfiltered lights to enter the pupil so
as to be visible but not affect color
vision the chromogen or X Chrome are the
opposite filtering the light entering
the pupil therefore distorting the
colors similar to Colorblind glasses but
not changing the color of the iris which
would be a dead giveaway to the
invigilator
however this trivial difference means a
huge markup instead of twenty dollars
for two lenses you will be paying
450 bucks for one lens and what do you
get for this price tag well one study
showed a 100 efficacy of the lenses
allowing colorblind subjects to pass the
ishihara with no mistakes and another
show that colorblind subjects made half
the number of errors but be warned
because another article describes the
story of a subject applying for the
military in India who failed the
ishihara once then when retaking it
proceeded to pass he was found to be
wearing a red contact lens to cheat the
exam and was summarily executed
okay not really this was India not
communist China in a related note a 2020
report out of zhangzhu Province in China
described a man who tried to cheat his
way into a driver's license by wearing
such a red contact lens after the doctor
raised the alarm the colorblind man was
seized by police and to quote the report
properly handled
um seriously guys be careful when
screwing around with these contacts
method number three involves using bad
lighting the colors of a pip are so
exact that the color temperature of the
white light used to illuminate The book
must be between six and seven thousand
Kelvin equivalent to bright sunlight a
light that is too warm or too cool can
distort the colors which will generally
be to your advantage making the tests
easier to read so if you can somehow
arrange for the warm light of an
incandescent light bulb or the cool
fluorescent light of a school classroom
it may give you a small boost to your
score
one of the creators of the hrr test a
test far superior to the ishihara even
noted as they are presently administered
pseudoisochromatic plates have become as
much tests of the lighting system used
as they are tests of the subject's color
discriminatory ability in addition to
warm or cool colored lights using
lighting with a poor CRI or color
rendering index can also help to distort
the colors yet at the same time would
not be detectable to the invigilator
funnily enough this may be the only
instance ever where a low CRI is desired
if anyone else has any ideas LEDs and
incandescent bulbs have a high CRI but
fluorescent lights have a low CRI that
can give you some extra distortion on
those Pips regardless of what light
source is used the most important
feature is that it's as bright as
possible as long as it's not making you
squint as we turn down the brightness of
a light source you can see how the
colors get more difficult to
differentiate likewise the brighter the
light source is the more distance your
eye will be able to detect between
colors of confusion meaning the Pips
will be easier to read this part isn't
even cheating the ishihara guidelines
state that the test must be bright
enough but does not give an upper limit
to brightness so make sure the lights
are turned up bright and are positioned
so that there is no glare coming on the
Pips
method number four involves stretching
the rules that the ishihara guidelines
outline for the invigilator according to
the instructions The book must be placed
exactly 75 centimeters in front of the
subject on the contrary I have found
that some Pips can be easier to read
when observing from either closer or
farther so you can play with this if
possible also this three second time
limit for each plate is not just due to
the impatience of the invigilator
getting to study a pip for 10 seconds
could help you solve a pip which you
wouldn't be able to see in only three I
bring this up because the three seconds
is definitely not a universally enforced
limit if you can find an invigilator
that is a little looser with the rules
either from ignorance or Sympathy for
the color blind that bit of extra time
can give you a tiny boost actually one
paper found that a motivated Layman who
read the rules of the ishihara and
applied it to a hundred industrial
employees disagreed 30 of the time with
the diagnosis deter determined by an
ishihara expert
another described that the ishihara test
used for the US military during World
War II let 50 percent of colorblind
subjects pass due to the carelessness
and incompetence of invigilators so if
you can get a careless incompetence or
okay sympathetic invigilator to
administer your test your chances of
passing go up a lot
method number five is all about practice
okay also not cheating per se but
practicing with the precise test you
will be taking can increase your chances
of passing because the ishihara is a
trainable test just another one of its
fatal flaws simply being familiar with
the font of the numerals used in the
ishihara knowing their strangely unique
shapes can give you an edge I extracted
the numerals from the ishihara plates
and generated some solidified versions
of them here first note that there is no
zero which is already a useful piece of
information second the shapes almost
look like they were taken from different
font families most have unique features
such that they can be identified while
only looking at one non-descript part of
the numeral look at where the curves are
where the flats are where the bulbous
protrusions are these can all give you
an edge when trying to differentiate
between a five and a six for example
even with my my protonopia one of the
strongest forms of red green color of
blindness there is one plate where I can
make out just the tip of a numeral on
the top left if I was taking the issue
heart for the first time I'd be stuck
guessing between four numbers but
because I've practiced I know from its
placement in the circle that it's a
single digit not a double-digit solution
and because of the angle I can also
guess that it is more likely to be a 7
than a two or a three for example this
trainability was fixed in Pips designed
after the ishihara namely the spp which
uses digital numerals and the hrr which
uses shapes but the ishihara just sticks
to its nostalgic stylized fonts for no
good reason of course when you practice
the test so many times you are going to
start noticing patterns and that's why
my sixth method for cheating the
ishihara test and definitely the most
controversial on this list
is memorization controversial because
with just a few hours of preparation
even someone with total color blindness
can completely break the ishihara test
in 1935 just 18 years after the first
publishing of the ishihara plates Elsie
Murray a color vision researcher wrote a
scathing open letter to American weekly
which had republished the ishihara
plates and their corresponding Solutions
the plates have been duplicated along
with an easily memorized key and exposed
in public places reducing the fifth
edition to a parlor game most examiners
refuse to bother to present the plates
in variable order to foil cheating the
Mischief done to science and to the
general public by the commercial
exploitation of the present Edition is
irreparable the easy solution for the
Publishers of the ishihara plates would
be to randomize the numbers in each book
or at least change them every few years
but they didn't do that tracking down
the oldest version of the ishihara
plates that I could find they have not
changed since at least 1951.
at least before that with the exception
of an early switch from hiragana
characters to Roman numerals and the
addition of some different kinds of
plates all happening prior to 1951
I imagine they have probably never
changed the unwillingness of the former
and current Publishers of the ishihara
plates to change the numbers in every
Edition is frankly mind-boggling and
makes memorization so much easier as I
said earlier the ishihara book comes in
10 14 24 or 38 plate versions but each
of the smaller versions is a complete
subset of the larger version that is all
of the plates of the 14 page version are
also in the 24 page version and so on
however they are not in the same order
so you do have to make sure you know
which version you are getting before you
start memorizing lucky for you potential
memorizers occupational screening is
usually done with the 14 plate version
and memorizing all of the numbers
they're in is almost trivially easy
equivalent to memorizing like
two phone numbers which all right might
be a terrible analogy nowadays
considering none of you probably can
even remember your own phone number but
um say
equivalent to memorizing all 14 jersey
numbers off the 1995 Chicago Bulls
lineup like
easy despite this the ishihara does have
one defense against memorization the
ability to reorder the pages you see the
ishihara test is technically a binder
not a book that means that the pages can
be removed and reordered to make it
harder to memorize however as Elsie
Murray pointed out in 1935 most
individualators do not reorder their
pages and if the several ASMR YouTube
videos I've watched of optometrists with
deep cleavage are any indication of real
optometrists you can usually rely on the
books being in the original order for no
other reason then it makes scoring easy
for lazy invigilators so if you're up
for crossing your fingers and hoping
whoever gives your test is just as lazy
then just memorizing the 14 digits in
raw order 12 8 29 5 3 Etc may be all you
need even if the pages have been
reordered though it's far from game over
the plate number is printed on every
page so you could just memorize the
answers associated with a page number
which will help even if the plates have
been reordered the small problem with
this method is the font size of those
plate numbers are so small that it's
unlikely you'd be able to read them from
that 75 centimeter distance without
getting noticeably closer to the book
something that is explicitly forbidden
in the rules there are a few other
memorization techniques to give you a
small Advantage number one memorize the
transformation plates these are the
plates that will look like one number to
a color normal but a different number to
the colorblind for example when you see
this plate and it appears to you as a 21
you should know that the true answer is
always 74. if you see 70 you already
know that there are no zeros in the real
solution set and in that case the real
answer is always 29. number two memorize
the hidden digit plates these plates
more colloquially known as the reverse
ishihara are solvable by the color blind
but typically not by color normals for
example where you see a 73 a color
normal should see nothing just a bunch
of bright colors so you must also claim
to see nothing number three know what
all the possible numbers are in the
entire set of 38 plates if you can't
decide whether something is a 9 8 or 0
just know that there are no plates with
nine or zero as a solution so choose
eight number four memorize the colors of
the plates which
yeah it sounds like really crap advice I
know but even I see five distinct color
schemes in the plates all of which I've
named after the most prominent color
that I see they definitely aren't the
real colors but just a way for me to
categorize them in my head and with that
I can remember a smaller subset of
solutions for each color scheme by
themselves these four techniques may
help you improve your score by a plate
or two but they aren't really a
foolproof solution for that we've got to
kick that memorization up a notch and
learn some dot pattern recognition
the ishihara plates were all originally
hand-painted decades ago so the dot
pattern is unique to each plate you can
therefore pretty quickly identify each
plate by focusing on a shape in a
specific region of the dot pattern
typically at the very top of the plate
personally in these three plates for
example I see a crab
a clown and lightning Each of which have
become obvious to me upon seeing those
plates and allow me to quickly give the
correct answer within the three second
time limit you'll probably find
different shapes that stand out for you
but find your shapes and start
practicing a process that you may have
guessed takes hours and hours to get
right but time well spent if it allows
you to get every plate correct and Hell
many standards allow you to miss half
the plates and still pass the test like
for the FAA is dot pattern recognition
really the Silver Bullet for defeating
the ishihara well allow me to switch
perspective dear invigilators unlike
subjects using contact lenses it can be
quite hard to figure out if a subject
has memorized the solutions as an
invigilator your first line of defense
obviously is to reorder your plates and
then reprint Your solution card to match
that specific order it helps against the
simple telephone number style memorizers
but not those using more robust forms of
memorization during my own practice with
the dot pattern recognition I've only
come up with two observations that could
give away my technique first the fact
that every plate takes me two to three
seconds to answer since I have to go
through the complex process of finding
my shape and relating it to a number
color normal would typically answer in
less than a second since they
immediately see the number but two to
three seconds is still within the rules
and could just mean a subject is slow or
being careful second if I screw up a
plate my incorrect answer would likely
be a correct and sensor for a different
plate if the Plate's answer is 73 and I
say 45 a number that visually looks
nothing like 73 and at the same time is
the answer to a different plate that is
quite the fishy coincidence those two
points are the only ways I could think
of for detecting dot pattern recognition
and they certainly don't constitute
catching the cheater red-handed or red
pupled in the case of tinted contact
lenses so what do you do if you've got
an inkling that they're cheating the
obvious course of action would be to
give them a better unmemorizable test
like the D15 unfortunately you are
typically Bound by some specification or
mandate to use a specific test namely
the ishihara in this case while broadly
sticking to the ishihara plates you
could also try focusing on the path
tracing Pips in these Pips the subject
must trace a winding path with their
finger or a brush instead of wrecking
organizing a number these were
originally included to test e-literate
subjects but are also useful in that
memorizing a path is much harder than
memorizing a digit unfortunately the 14
plate concise Edition which is usually
specifically mandated by occupational
standards has none of these tracing
plates which are relegated to the 38
plate complete edition technically you
can't fail a subject by using a
different test not mandated by their
potential employer and almost any
organization that accepts multiple
different color vision tests only
requires a subject to pass one of them
even if they fail all the others in the
end you can't unequivocally or even
confidently prove that a subject is
cheating without breaking the rules of
the ishihara test yourself
I can imagine it is super frustrating
but it will always be a problem as long
as we keep using the ishihara as an
invigilator or someone designing an
occupational standard your best option
to foil the cheaters
is simple use a different test the
ability to be memorized is a fatal flaw
of the ishihara test one which other
less common tests like the D15 fail
Intercity University test fundamentally
avoid and as such they are much harder
to cheat
if everyone who uses the ishihara
instead use a much less cheatable
pseudo-isochromatic plate like the hrr
which has existed since the 1940s
everyone the invigilators the public
even the colorblind ourselves would be
better off
sincerely protan
and yes you heard that right ditching
the ishihara benefits the colorblind
it's not very intuitive I know how are
we better off by not using the one test
that we have the back door key to the
one test we could hypothetically cheat
on well while it's clear the issue heart
benefits the dishonest colorblind
subjects let's not forget it also
punishes the honest colorblind subjects
the ishihara is intended as a screening
test and is therefore much stricter than
the other tests the idea is if you pass
the ishihara your color vision is
definitely okay for anything if you fail
the ishihara it doesn't even mean you're
colorblind it simply means further
testing is required the nasty truth is
though many subjects and invigilators
kind of treat the ishihara as the end of
the line and subjects are usually not
even informed upon failing it that they
have other really decent options for
passing a different approved test the
FAA has a dozen different tasks that
someone can take instead of the ishihara
pass any one of them and you're good for
your pilot's license most people will
opt to take the ishihara because it's
the one task that their local
optometrist has on hand
but it's also one of if not the hardest
test to pass of the lot the Farnsworth
Lantern is generally the test of choice
for a pilot's license from the FAA and
there are countless internet
testimonials of people who miserably
fail the ishihara but were able to pass
the phalan perfectly and under each of
these stories there are always comments
from colorblind guys who had failed the
ishihara and immediately prematurely
gave up on their dreams so how do we
best beat the ishihara
we kill it there that is the seventh
method kill the ishihara but it's never
going to die unless organizations
concerned about color vision start
seeing the ishihara as a problem
cheating is happening already you can
Google it we just need to draw attention
to it get organizations scared of
cheating and they will stop mandating
the ishihara okay
maybe you think I've crossed the line
with this video maybe you think I am
encouraging colorblind people to cheat
their way into a job that they are not
capable of safely performing and putting
themselves and others at risk but that
is not my intent and
I don't think that will be the outcome I
made this video for the same reason that
the lock picking lawyer routinely
demonstrates how easy Master Lock locks
are to pick not to encourage theft but
to show how irresponsible it is to trust
Master Lock for your security
highlighting the weaknesses of the
ishihara is the best way to get people
to stop using it
88 years ago Elsie Murray saw that the
damage was done to the Integrity of the
ishihara as soon as it was published
publicly for the first time since then
despite much better Alternatives popping
up there have been no concerted efforts
to either improve the ishihara tests or
just replace it if you really think that
the risk of colorblind subjects
circumventing the test is so high if a
company really wanted to neutralize that
risk then they wouldn't be specifying
that potential hires be screened with
arguably the worst colorblind test it is
no surprise then that the organizations
that do not think very hard about why
they're excluding the colorblind or even
whether they need to exclude us instead
of making some trivial accommodations in
their processes are also the type of
organization that would just default to
specifying the ishihara to screen their
potential recruits and maybe from an
ethical or discrimination point of view
maybe those organizations does deserve
to have the colorblind cheating the test
anyway have any of you had any luck with
using any of these methods if you have
successfully or unsuccessfully cheated
at the ishihara I would love to hear
about it you can leave a comment here or
contact me directly through my website
chromophobe.com want to know how
ishihara plates are designed and how
they work then check out this video next
this is chromophobe
[Music]
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