Color Blindness Facts

Color blindness is a color vision deficiency, characterized by a persons inability to differentiate between various colors. Although color blindness is genetic in nature, i.e. passing from one generation to another, a substantial amount of cases are related to damage caused to eye, brain or nerves. Though rare, exposure to certain chemicals can also trigger color blindness. Although color blindness is technically a wrong term to refer to this eye problem, it is preferred over color vision deficiency, owing to the simplicity of pronunciation as well as understanding for a layman. Although it's a minor disability, there are certain situations wherein being color blind can cause difficulties for the individual in various walks of life. Simple things like choosing clothes or reading analytical diagrams may seem like a tedious task for a color blind individual. Let's have a detailed look at some of the prominent color blindness facts.

Facts About Color Blindness

English scientist John Dalton was the first person to present a paper on color blindness and as a mark of respect for his contribution, color blindness is also referred to as Daltonism. Interestingly, John Dalton was a color blind himself. Some simple yet interesting color blindness facts are mentioned below.

Color Blindness Severity
The severity of color blindness is usually categorized into four parts.

• Slightly color blind.
• Moderately color blind.
• Strongly color blind.
• Absolutely color blind.

Scientifically, absolute color blindness or complete color blindness is referred to as achromatopsia or monochromacy. Complete color blindness is most often associated with eye conditions such as amblyopia and nystagmus.

Color Blindness Inheritance
One of the most interesting facts about color blindness is about inheritance of the disorder. Color blindness is one of the genetic disorders in humans. As the most common form of this deficiency is related to X chromosome or color blindness chromosome, color blindness tends to be more common in males than in females. But color blindness genetics also suggest that even though women are not color blind themselves, they are very active carriers of color blindness. Interestingly, a mother is bound to pass her red-green color blindness to all her sons, but its less likely for the father to do the same.

Red Green Color Blindness Facts
Approximately 99 percent of all color blind people suffer from red-green color blindness. Statistics reveal that around 75 percent of people suffering from red-green color blindness have problems with green perception, while the remaining 24 percent have problem with red perception. But this doesn't mean that a person suffering from red-green color blindness tends to mix up between red and green colors only. The fact is that the problem prevails in the whole color spectrum. The most common form of color blindness is deuteranomaly, a form of red-green color blindness. Red-green color blindness is a recessive sex linked, and therefore we see that more men are color blind than their female counter parts.

Color Blindness Test
There are several types of color blindness tests. The most commonly used color blindness tests are

• Pseudoisochromatic plates.
• Arrangement test.
• Anomaloscope test.

Among the various tests for color blindness, anomaloscope, which measures the quantitative and qualitative anomalies in color perception, gives the most accurate color blindness results. Ishihara plates are also popularly used for testing color blindness, but they are comparatively less accurate. Color blindness deficiency can be corrected to a certain extent by wearing color correcting lenses. A person wearing these correcting lenses wears two different colored lenses in his/her eyes.

These were some of the common color blindness facts, which everyone ought to know. Although color blindness is classified as a disability, one of the most interesting facts about color blindness is the advantage that the color blind people tend to have over people with normal vision. One such advantage is the ability of color blind people to penetrate certain camouflages with ease. As of today, there is no accepted treatment of color blindness, but there is a hope that we will have one very soon.