50 Facts about Color Blindness
- Posted by Daniel Flück on January 6th, 2009 filed in Academic
- 30 Comments »
#01 99% of all colorblind people are not really color blind but color deficient; the term color blindness is misleading.
#02 Red-green color blindness is a combination of red-blindness (protan defects) and green-blindness (deutan defects).
#03 Color blindness is more prevalent among males than females, because the most common form of color vision deficiency is encoded on the X sex chromosome.
#04 “What color is this?” is the most annoying question you can ask your colorblind friend.
#05 There are three main types of color vision deficiency: protan, deutan, and tritan defects.
#06 Strongly colorblind people might only be able to tell about 20 hues apart from each other, with normal color vision this number raises to more than 100 different hues.
#07 Colored lenses or glasses can improve color discrimination in your problem areas but can not give you back normal color vision.
#08 Ishihara plates are the best known color blindness tests, but they are not the most accurate ones.
#09 About 8% of all men are suffering from color blindness.
#10 Severity of color blindness is usually divided into the following four categories: slightly, moderate, strong, and absolute.
#11 The terms protan, deutan, and tritan are Greek and translate to first, second, and third.
#12 A father can’t pass his red-green color blindness on to his sons.
#14 Color vision deficiency would be a much better term; but it is not as easy to pronounce compared to color blindness.
#15 There are people which are really suffering from complete color blindness, which is called achromatopsia or monochromacy.
#16 Blue-yellow color blindness would be better called blue-green color blindness, as this are more the problem colors.
#17 There exists every nuance of color vision deficiency severity, starting from almost normal color vision up to complete color blindness.
#18 Protanopia, deuteranopia, and tritanopia are types of dichromacy, which means you have only two different color receptors (cones) compared to three with normal color vision.
#19 If a woman is red-green colorblind, all her sons will also be colorblind.
#20 Colorblind people feel handicapped in everyday life, and almost nobody recognizes this.
#21 99% of all colorblind people are suffering from red-green color blindness.
#22 When using color correcting lenses you are wearing two differently colored lenses in your eyes.
#23 Red-green color blindness is a recessive sex linked trait, which causes more men to be colorblind than women.
#24 John Dalton wrote the first known scientific paper regarding color blindness.
#25 Protanomaly, deuteranomaly, and tritanomaly are types of anomalous trichromacy, which means you have three different color receptors (cones) like people with normal color vision but one of them is shifted in its peak.
#26 In certain countries you need normal color vision to get a drivers license.
#27 Deuteranomaly—one form of red-green color blindness—is by far the most common form of color blindness.
#28 More women than men are carriers of color blindness, even though they are not colorblind themselves.
#29 Some people get rejected from a job assignment because of their color vision deficiency.
#30 About 0.5% of all women are suffering from color blindness.
#31 Blue-yellow color blindness is a dominant not sex linked trait, which means both men and women are equally affected.
#32 Red-green color blindness doesn’t mean that you are only mixing up red and green colors, but the whole color spectrum can cause you problems.
#33 The anomaloscope is the most accurate color blindness test known today.
#34 Police officer, firefighter, and airline pilot are the most famous jobs which require normal color vision.
#35 There is no treatment or cure for color blindness.
#36 Pseudoisochromatic plates were introduced by Professor J. Stilling of Strassburg in 1883; the Ishihara plates by Dr. Shinobu Ishihara followed almost half a century later.
#37 Different chromosomes are involved as sources for the different types of color vision deficiency.
#38 Women can also suffer from color vision deficiency.
#39 Monochromacy—also called achromatopsia—means you have only one type of color receptors (cones) in your eyes.
#40 Color blindness is also called Daltonism, after the scientist John Dalton.
#41 The most often used types of color blindness tests are: pseudoisochromatic plates, arrangement test, and the anomaloscope.
#42 Better color vision deficiency terms would be: red-blindness for protanopia, red-weakness for protanomaly, green-blindness for deuteranopia, green-weakness for deuteranomaly, blue-blindness for tritanopia, and blue-weakness for tritanomaly.
#43 John Dalton believed his whole life that the cause of his color blindness is a colored fluid inside his eye balls.
#44 Many colorblind people have problems with matching clothes and buying ripe bananas.
#45 Quite a lot of people with normal color vision can’t pass an Ishihara plates test free of errors.
#46 The International Colour Vision Society is scientifically investigating every aspect of color vision and color vision deficiency.
#47 Confusion lines of the CIE 1931 color space show exactly the colors of confusion for all forms of color blindness.
#48 Only a whole battery of color blindness tests can reveal the true type and severity of your color vision deficiency.
#49 John Dalton was also colorblind himself.
#50 A Colblindor is a colorblind person who learned to enjoy his colorblind life ;-)
30 Responses to “50 Facts about Color Blindness”
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January 7th, 2009 at 9:50
Hello Daniel,
It’s Vasile, the colorblind Romanian (where one needs normal color vision to get a driver’s license). Thank you for posting this 50 facts. It will help me a lot to prepare my advocacy before European Parliament’s Committee for Petitions this month. You website is a very good resource and contains a breadth of information on color deficiencies.
January 7th, 2009 at 17:47
[...] LINK: 50 Facts about Color Blindness. [...]
January 9th, 2009 at 2:50
What is the risk of issuing a drivers license to a colorblind person? And why such an unfair law exist?
January 9th, 2009 at 10:48
@jofman
For some reason I cannot understand, it seems that communist countries had this rule. A friend of mine in China said Ishihara plates are also mandatory to pass to get the license. But there too money solves these problems, as do in Romania. I chose the longer path of sending petitions, memoirs, etc.
There would be some reasons for those that made this laws:
- in Romania there are a lot of deadly car accidents so having a whole category that might cause accidents out of a car could reduce the number
- the doctors who made this law have no idea how we see (I am medium deuteranomalous) and they imagine who knows what
The problem is that in Romania this problem causes increased bribery; probably 80% of the colorblinds who want a driver’s license get one using relations or money.
I hope this will end soon.
January 28th, 2009 at 4:31
I knew I had problems matching clothes – yesterday I wore navy blue pants which I would have sworn were black when I put them on. I fail the Ishihara test and ARGUE about the thing! But the biggest surprise on this page is the realization that my inability to get the best choice of bananas at the market is because of my color-blindness. We learn to deal with our problem and adjust for it; it’s the things that we never really consciously realize that worry me. And for the record, I could agree more with #4. Don’t ask me what color something is; your just going to be shocked when I tell you it’s pink or orange when it’s really red or when I say it’s plum colored when it’s maroon or purple. It’s disgusting when people ask this – like asking a person in a wheel-chair to go get the paper from the drive!
May 1st, 2009 at 17:30
ya im in school and doing a project and i got somegood factsoff it
July 31st, 2009 at 14:17
I found it to be the most frustrating thing in elementry school to be asked to name the color of something when the color in question had no name for me. I’ve tried to explain this to people but they don’t seem to really understand. And I do feel like “color blindness” is a handicap.
August 13th, 2009 at 17:49
I think with me its more mental then visual. I can diffrientation between Pink and Purple, but Sometimes the words come out wrong, when / if asked.
September 17th, 2009 at 9:14
[...] This site answers lots of questions i used to have: http://www.color-blindness.com/2009/01/06/50-facts-about-color-blindness/ [...]
October 1st, 2009 at 3:43
Very interesting… I learned a lot of new things!
December 17th, 2009 at 5:52
Thanks for this very useful information! It really helped me with a color blindness project! I also learned about what color blindness specifically is! Thanks a lot! Very Helpful! :o)
December 17th, 2009 at 17:59
very helpful for school project
December 25th, 2009 at 21:17
Thank you, it was interesting. Have more to such intelligent people.
February 2nd, 2010 at 23:15
Are certain racial ethnicities more likely to get some form of color deficiency?
February 13th, 2010 at 22:57
Hey. For the Red-Green and the Blue-Yellow types…
I see red fine but green is hard for me.
I get confused with Green and Brown.
Green and Yellow.
Blue and Purple
Green and Orange.
What type am I?
February 14th, 2010 at 16:13
Good fact collection friend. Interesting to read and really useful information. Thanks a lot.
February 17th, 2010 at 18:42
dogs are color blind it a proven fact
April 3rd, 2010 at 2:38
[...] colblindor.com to learn more about specific types of colorblindness. Coblis–Color Blindness Simulator can also [...]
April 11th, 2010 at 6:33
and no dogs are not colorblind!!!!! they just don’t see the colors as rich and good as we do!
April 15th, 2010 at 17:58
[...] la vision et dont le daltonisme n’est que la partie émergée de l’iceberg. Lire 50 Facts about Color Blindness pour en savoir davantage sur ces [...]
April 21st, 2010 at 4:39
#28 More women than men are carriers of color blindness, even though they are not colorblind themselves.
To keep a statistic of app 1:10 males to be “colour blind” in the population there is app 20% OF ALL FEMALES IN THE POPULATION THAT ARE CARRIERS of the defective gene and nearly all are unaware of it. We need more awareness at school and IN health studies.
Dennis Overton
Colour Blind awareness and support group AUSTRALIA
July 25th, 2010 at 17:03
Thx alot Daniel..
August 27th, 2010 at 21:10
this is a neat set of facts. I found out today my son is slightly colorblind and once they are done putting the results together I will know what ‘kind’ and how severe it is! It made so much sense (and I thought he just didn’t match his clothes cause he’s a boy and didn’t care!)
September 13th, 2010 at 11:08
[...] 50 Facts about colour blindness [...]
December 22nd, 2010 at 17:09
Thanks so much. I used this for a school project and it really helped me.
December 30th, 2010 at 19:17
I’m colorblind and I have no trouble finding ripe bananas. However I do fall into the water when I play mario kart because the road and the water look the same to me. Also when I get pulled over for drinking and driving I tell the police that I thought the rum was milk and I usually get off.
January 25th, 2011 at 7:23
I think I’m becoming color deficient. My whole life when I looked around in the sun the shadows were blood red. They all blend into one blood red, to the point where I couldn’t see a car coming down the clouded side of the street (I wasn’t hit). Now as time has gone on, I can no longer see the color black. All true black appears as blood red or a dark blue. I have very poor vision. I also always see near-microscopic red and blue spots. Can anyone help me?
February 14th, 2011 at 1:45
I used this for my science project and it covered everything I needed, this website rocks!!
March 19th, 2011 at 8:39
well, there goes my dream of becoming a combat controller in the Air Force
April 25th, 2011 at 20:47
This is very useful information, showing how people may suffer from colorblindness in their point of view. Informational website. Thanks.