Colour Blindness

Colour blindness is usually hereditary and affects one in twelve boys but only one in two hundred girls. A simple test can be performed at the eye doctor's rooms to assess colour vision.

Colour blindness, in reality a colour vision deficiency, affects your ability to distinguish certain colours, such as red and green or blue and yellow.

Causes

Light- and colour-sensitive cells in the retina don't respond as they should to colour with a colour vision deficiency. This disorder affects men more than women, because it is caused by a common X-linked recessive gene. Men inherit the colour deficiency gene from a colour-deficient mother or a mother with normal colour vision who carries the gene. Colour-deficient fathers never pass the gene directly to their children, although daughters are always carriers of the colour-deficient gene.

Symptoms

Red-green colour deficiency is the most common form of colour vision deficiency. People diagnosed with this deficiency have a hard time determining if colours are red or green. A less common form is blue-yellow colour deficiency.

Very rarely do colour deficient people see only in shades of grey without any colour, like a black-and-white photograph. See your eye care practitioner if you notice difficulty distinguishing these colours.

Most Common Treatments

Colour vision deficiency cannot be cured, and normal colour cannot be restored to colour deficient. Those diagnosed with the disorder can learn how to work around an inability to discern certain colours, such as arranging clothes in an organised way, or remembering order rather than colour, such as the red light sits in the top position on a traffic light. Diagnosing colour vision deficiency in early childhood may prevent learning problems during the school years, as many learning materials rely heavily on colour.