Proposal 310-11A6

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OCdav40@aol.com

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I am an electrician who deals with this partial colorblind issue everyday. Obviously I think think that marking the wires with the colors is a great idea. My own experience is that I only have a problem with a few colors eg. brown/red green/gray blue /purlple. Distinguishing these from one another can be tough. Every other facet of my day to to day job I complete adequetly. Yet I still hear guys say there is no room in the electrical industry for people like me. From what the numbers bear out there has to be thousands of guys out there just like me. We try to hide our affliction from our fellow workers so we are not outed and become a laughing stock amongst our fellow workers. Are there any Federal or state laws that bar people from working in the electrical trade with partial colorbind issues?
 
I've worked among color-blind construction electricians quite a number of times. It seems to cause them no special issuesn in construction. I can't imagine that a color-blind service electrician would get along so well, however. Depends on what you do, and how bad off you are, I suppose. I suspect very much that the Americans with Disabilities Act might play into the hiring aspect, somehow. I know that I'd have to think hard about whether I wanted to hire a color blind fellow or not, depending on the type of position. If the disability effected his ability to perform the job safely, then I'm not sure if I could or would.
 
I know the military and other professionals such as pilots get screened for color deficiency. If you don't pass, you don't get the job. I am aware of a least one Florida-based electrical contractor that asks if you are color deficient on the job application. I understand that if you acknowledge that you are, they will send you to an eye doctor to get evaluated further before they hire you.

It would probably be worth consulting with a lawyer to get a complete understanding of your legal rights...
 
i had lasik eye surgery 3 years ago, and now have trouble distinguishing between blue and green. it seems to depend on certain lighting situations. i think it has something to do w/ the way light reflects off my eye now since they reshaped my lenses. i've been able to work through it and i have gotten better at determining which color i'm looking at.
 
Blue Green not much difference.......Phase or Hot.. Hot or Phase...How do you overcome this? or avoid wiring issues?
 
30 years ago I wired a dark room for IBM. I used a blue wire as the ungrounded conductor. The next day my boss gave me hell for using a green wire as an ungrounded wire. I told him I used a blue. He said that the IBM inspectors were saying it was green.

I finally realized that they were looking at the job with the yellow light on. Blue & yellow make green--- problem solved but it may be a good idea to not use blue in that situation.

Sorry if I got off topic there but I thought it showed how color can be a problem for anybody with the different color lights. You obviously will have to be extra careful.
 
I don't have a problem with someone being color blind. Most of our wire has a label showing color and size.

For trouble shooting, we use test equipment and make repairs with the power turned off.:)
 
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