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Things you need to know about color blindness
For many, being color-blind means confusing two colors: green and red. Colorblindness, as opposed to trichromats, has a distorted perception of colors, with two dominant colors (mostly blue and yellow) and their shades, so-called dichromates [1].
THERE ARE SEVERAL TYPES OF COLOR BLINDNESS [2].
Even in the trichromatic, which sees all the colors, there is a slight difference in perception. Weak perception of red called protanomaly, deuteranomaly or weak perception of green and tritanomaly and its weak perception of blue.
In the dichromate, the colorblind only perceiving 2 of the 3 primary colors, we can distinguish pronopatia and its perception of green and blue only, deuteranopia only for red and blue, and tritanopia concerning colorblindness, which only perceives the red and green.
Finally, the last category monochromatic that they see only black and white nuanced gray.
One of the most famous colorblind of the moment, Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of Facebook that visibly distinguishes blue to perfection which explains the design and dominant colors of this social network
THE ISHIHARA COLOR TEST
There is a simple and effective test to find out whether or not you are color blind, the Hishihara test. Place yourself one meter away from your computer screen and try to read the numbers [3].
An anomaly that confuses us … Do you have questions about color blindness? Discover these 5 Infos to know absolutely on the subject!
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Color blindness is not a disease but an anomaly
Unlike visual disorders that can be corrected, color blindness is an anomaly (often genetic) affecting the perception of colors. It can’t be “healed” as one might expect with an illness. The anomaly will not move: the perception will not improve but will not grow either.
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Color blindness concerns mainly men
This anomaly seems essentially masculine: it affects 8% of men, against only 0.5% of women. Why? Because of the (recessive) gene responsible for daltonism carried by the X chromosome. And since women each have two X chromosomes, both of them, transmitted by both parents, must carry the daltonism gene to transmit them. Very rare of course! For men, who have an X and a Y, it is quite another thing. It is enough that their single chromosome X (transmitted by the mother) carries the faulty gene so that they are color-blind.
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There are many forms of color blindness
Most of people think that being color-blind means confusing green with red. It is not so simple! Indeed, daltonism can appear in many forms. Each color-blind has its spectrum in which the shades are more or less important.
The shades that are missing being replaced by gray. Some see almost everything in black and white! But the famous confusion between green and red (called deuteranopia) is the most widespread form.
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A diagnosis sometimes late despite a very simple screening
It can take a long time to discover that you are color-blind. Of course, when from birth we perceive the world in a certain way, we do not think that others see it differently! However, Daltonish testing can be very easy and is often done at school during the first medical visits. The principle is as follows: patterns are formed by dots of one color on a background of another hue. If one does not destigmatize the form, it is because one is color-blind, neither more nor less!
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Color-blind glasses
As we have said, we can not “cure” the anomaly of color blindness. However, US researchers (from EnChroma) have looked into creating a pair of glasses that would help color-blind people better perceive and distinguish colors. What seriously reduce the disability suffered by most colorblind.
