Color Blindness

Individuals with color deficiency or color blindness deal with a loss of partial color perception when looking at everyday items. This deficiency can stem from a many problems but mainly problems with the receptors in the retina but also genetics, chemicals and brain damage. For one to grow up not being able to see color is extremely sad and unfair because there are so many beautiful things in life to experience. But losing color because of an incident is sad but yet they experienced looking at a world with color in their lifetime, others will never get that.

 During the 18 century was when chemist John Dalton first stated that this deficiency actually exists; he stated his own color perceptions, seeing darker colors than most. This began the research on abnormal color patterns, which lead to the visual tests we now use today.

The main type of test are called Ishihara plates, which is a number or object of a different color than there back ground. We have all taken these tests throughout middle and high school.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEIM4jmK1F0 (Example of tests)

Another way to tell if color deficiency exists is determining the minimum number of wavelengths needed to match any other wavelength in the spectrum. There are three types of color deficiency:

Monochromat: can match any wavelength in the spectrum by adjusting the intensity of other wavelengths. This is also known as total color blindness.

Dichromat- needs only two wavelengths to match all other wavelengths in the spectrum. This type is sex linked (usually males).

Anomalous- needs three wavelengths to match any wavelengths.

Determining a person vision is color deficient is semi easy in this complex and frustrating disorder. How do we find out what colors these people can and cannot see? To determine this we have to locate a “unilateral dichromat who is a person with trichromatic vision in one eye and dichromatic vision in the other.” (pg. 212 in text) Since both eyes connect to the brain we can determine what color coordinated with each eye, which can help us indicate what colors the person is and is not seeing.

To imagine a world without color doesn’t seem possible, living in a world with such beauty and uniqueness it seems unfair that there are some people who enjoy it and some who don’t at all or some who see something completely different than us!

Please check if you think you have been seeing distorted colors or no color at all! :)

http://www.univie.ac.at/Vergl-Physiologie/colortest/colortestF-en.html