Color Blindness
Color Vision Deficiency
What is Color Blindness?
Color. It affects every part of our lives. Color is emotional, experiential, and tactical. It gives art life. It entices us to eat certain foods and buy certain jewelry, and sometimes it literally defines these things. We also use color to interpret information such as signs and lights. It is deeply ingrained in our basic perception of the world. When the ability to see color is deficient, as in the case of color blindness, there is a dulling of what is seen; or one might say there is a dulling effect in how we see.
Color blindness is a reduced ability to distinguish between colors when compared to the standard for normal human color vision. When a person is color blind, also called color vision deficiency (CVD), they usually have difficulty distinguishing between certain colors such as yellow and orange, green and brown, pink and gray, or blue and purple.
Take the color vision test and see your results!
To learn if you are color blind, take the EnChroma Color Blind Test. If you have color blindness, our test can tell you your type of color vision and if your color vision deficiency is mild, moderate, or strong — in less than two minutes.
CVD Affects 1:12 Men, 1:200 women
These confusions are typical of what is called “red-green color blindness,” which includes protan-type CVD (protanomaly and protanopia) and deutan-type CVD (deuteranomaly and deuteranopia). Red-green color blindness is usually inherited via X-linked recessive genes. Other types of color blindness exist also, such as tritan-type CVD, also called blue-yellow color blindness, which is associated with the inability to see shades of blue, and confusions between blue and green colors. Blue-yellow color blindness is usually caused by age-related eye conditions such as glaucoma, or exposure to certain chemicals or medical treatments. In very rare cases, a person can be completely color blind, meaning they see only the intensity of light, but not its color. This is called monochromacy or achromatopsia. Achromatopsia can be inherited but can also result from progressive eye diseases such as retinitis pigmentosa. In summary, there are many types and degrees of what can be considered “color blindness,” ranging from partial to complete lack of color discrimination.
