Decreased ability to see color or color differences
Medical condition
Color blindness or color vision deficiency (CVD) is the decreased ability to see color or differences in color. The severity of color blindness ranges from mostly unnoticeable to full absence of color perception. Color blindness is usually an inherited problem or variation in the functionality of one or more of the three classes of cone cells in the retina, which mediate color vision. The most common form is caused by a genetic condition called congenital red–green color blindness (including protan and deutan types), which affects "up to" 1 in 12 males (8%) and 1 in 200 females (0.5%). The condition is more prevalent in males, because the opsin genes responsible are located on the X chromosome. Rarer genetic conditions causing color blindness include congenital blue–yellow color blindness (tritan type), blue cone monochromacy, and achromatopsia. Color blindness can also result from physical or chemical damage to the eye, the optic nerve, parts of the brain, or from medication toxicity. Color vision also naturally degrades in old age.
Diagnosis of color blindness is usually done with a color vision test, such as the Ishihara test. There is no cure for most causes of color blindness; however there is ongoing research into gene therapy for some severe conditions causing color blindness. Minor forms of color blindness do not significantly affect daily life and the color blind automatically develop adaptations and coping mechanisms to compensate for the deficiency. However, diagnosis may allow an individual, or their parents/teachers, to actively accommodate the condition. Color blind glasses (e.g. "EnChroma") may help the red–green color blind at some color tasks, but they do not grant the wearer "normal color vision" or the ability to see "new" colors. Some mobile apps can use a device's camera to identify colors.
Depending on the jurisdiction, the color blind are ineligible for certain careers, such as aircraft pilots, train drivers, police officers, firefighters, and members of the armed forces. The effect of color blindness on artistic ability is controversial, but a number of famous artists are believed to have been color blind.
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Effects.
A color blind person will have decreased (or no) color discrimination along the red–green axis, blue–yellow axis, or both. However, the vast majority of the color blind are only affected on their red–green axis.
The first indication of color blindness generally consists of a person using the wrong color for an object, such as when painting, or calling a color by the wrong name. The colors that are confused are very consistent among people with the same type of color blindness.
Confusion colors.
Confusion colors are pairs or groups of colors that will often be mistaken by the color blind. Confusion colors for red–green color blindness include:
Confusion colors for tritan include:
These colors of confusion are defined quantitatively by straight confusion lines plotted in CIEXYZ, usually plotted on the corresponding chromaticity diagram. The lines all intersect at a "copunctal point", which varies with the type of color blindness. Chromaticities along a confusion line will appear metameric to dichromats of that type. Anomalous trichromats of that type will see the chromaticities as metameric if they are close enough, depending on the strength of their CVD. For two colors on a confusion line to be metameric, the chromaticities first have to be made "isoluminant", meaning equal in lightness. Also, colors that may be isoluminant to the standard observer may not be isoluminant to a person with dichromacy.
Color tasks.
Cole describes four color tasks, all of which are impeded to some degree by color blindness:
The following sections describe specific color tasks with which the color blind typically have difficulty.
Food.
Color blindness causes difficulty with the "connotative" color tasks associated with selecting or preparing food. Selecting food for ripeness can be difficult; the green–yellow transition of bananas is particularly hard to identify. It can also be difficult to detect bruises, mold, or rot on some foods, to determine when meat is done by color, to distinguish some varietals, such as a Braeburn vs. a Granny Smith apple, or to distinguish colors associated with artificial flavors (e.g. jelly beans, sports drinks).
Skin color.
Changes in skin color due to bruising, sunburn, rashes or even blushing are easily missed by the red–green color blind.
Traffic lights.
The colors of traffic lights can be difficult for the red–green color blindness. This difficulty includes distinguishing red/amber lights from sodium street lamps, distinguishing green lights (closer to cyan) from normal white lights, and distinguishing red from amber lights, especially when there are no positional clues available (see image).
The main coping mechanism to overcome these challenges is to memorize the position of lights. The order of the common triplet traffic light is standardized as red–amber–green from top to bottom or left to right. Cases that deviate from this standard are rare. One such case is a traffic light in Tipperary Hill in Syracuse, New York, which is upside-down (green–amber–red top to bottom) due to the sentiments of its Irish American community. However, the light has been criticized due to the potential hazard it poses for color blind drivers.
There are other several features of traffic lights available that help accommodate the color blind. British Rail signals use more easily identifiable colors: The red is blood red, the amber is yellow and the green is a bluish color. Most British road traffic lights are mounted vertically on a black rectangle with a white border (forming a "sighting board"), so that drivers can more easily look for the position of the light. In the eastern provinces of Canada, traffic lights are sometimes differentiated by shape in addition to color: square for red, diamond for yellow, and circle for green (see image).
Signal lights.
Navigation lights in marine and aviation settings employ red and green lights to signal the relative position of other ships or aircraft. Railway signal lights also rely heavily on red–green–yellow colors. In both cases, these color combinations can be difficult for the red–green color blind. Lantern Tests are a common means of simulating these light sources to determine not necessarily whether someone is color blind, but whether they can functionally distinguish these specific signal colors. Those who cannot pass this test are generally completely restricted from working on aircraft, ships or rail, for example.
Fashion.
Color analysis is the analysis of color in its use in fashion, to determine personal color combinations that are most aesthetically pleasing. Colors to combine can include clothing, accessories, makeup, hair color, skin color, eye color, etc. Color analysis involves many aesthetic and comparative color task that can be difficult for the color blind.
Art.
Inability to distinguish color does not necessarily preclude the ability to become a celebrated artist. The 20th century expressionist painter Clifton Pugh, three-time winner of Australia's Archibald Prize, on biographical, gene inheritance and other grounds has been identified as a person with protanopia. 19th century French artist Charles Méryon became successful by concentrating on etching rather than painting after he was diagnosed as having a red–green deficiency. Jin Kim's red–green color blindness did not stop him from becoming first an animator and later a character designer with Walt Disney Animation Studios.
Advantages.
Deuteranomals are better at distinguishing shades of khaki, which may be advantageous when looking for predators, food, or camouflaged objects hidden among foliage. Dichromats tend to learn to use texture and shape clues and so may be able to penetrate camouflage that has been designed to deceive individuals with normal color vision.
Some tentative evidence finds that the color blind are better at penetrating certain color camouflages. Such findings may give an evolutionary reason for the high rate of red–green color blindness. There is also a study suggesting that people with some types of color blindness can distinguish colors that people with normal color vision are not able to distinguish. In World War II, color blind observers were used to penetrate camouflage.
In the presence of chromatic noise, the color blind are more capable of seeing a luminous signal, as long as the chromatic noise appears metameric to them. This is the effect behind most "reverse" Pseudoisochromatic plates (e.g. "hidden digit" Ishihara plates) that are discernible to the color blind but unreadable to people with typical color vision.
Digital design.
Color codes are useful tools for designers to convey information. The interpretation of this information requires users to perform a variety of color tasks, usually comparative but also sometimes connotative or denotative. However, these tasks are often problematic for the color blind when design of the color code has not followed best practices for accessibility. For example, one of the most ubiquitous connotative color codes is the "red means bad and green means good" or similar systems, based on the classic signal light colors. However, this color coding will almost always be undifferentiable to deutans or protans, and can instead be supplemented with a parallel connotative system (symbols, smileys, etc.).
Good practices to ensure design is accessible to the color blind include:
Color selection in design.
A common task for designers is to select a subset of colors ("qualitative" colormap) that are as mutually differentiable as possible (salient). For example, player pieces in a board game should be as different as possible.
Classic advice suggests using Brewer palettes, but several of these are not actually accessible to the color blind.
An issue with color selection is that the colors with the greatest contrast to the red–green color blind tend to be colors of confusion to the blue–yellow color blind and vice versa.
In 2018, UX designer Allie Ofisher published 3 color palettes with 6 colors each, distinguishable for all variants of color blindness.
Sequential colormaps.
A common task for data visualization is to represent a color scale, or "sequential" colormap, often in the form of a heat map or choropleth. Several scales are designed with special consideration for the color blind and are widespread in academia, including Cividis, Viridis and Parula. These comprise a light-to-dark scale superimposed on a yellow-to-blue scale, making them monotonic and perceptually uniform to all forms of color vision.
Classification.
Much terminology has existed and does exist for the classification of color blindness, but the typical classification for color blindness follows the von Kries classifications, which uses severity and affected cone for naming.
Based on severity.
Based on clinical appearance, color blindness may be described as total or partial. Total color blindness (monochromacy) is much less common than partial color blindness. Partial color blindness includes dichromacy and anomalous trichromacy, but is often clinically defined as mild, moderate or strong.
Monochromacy.
Monochromacy is often called "total color blindness" since there is no ability to see color. Although the term may refer to acquired disorders such as cerebral achromatopsia, it typically refers to congenital color vision disorders, namely rod monochromacy and blue cone monochromacy).
In cerebral achromatopsia, a person cannot perceive colors even though the eyes are capable of distinguishing them. Some sources do not consider these to be true color blindness, because the failure is of perception, not of vision. They are forms of visual agnosia.
Monochromacy is the condition of possessing only a single channel for conveying information about color. Monochromats are unable to distinguish any colors and perceive only variations in brightness. Congenital monochromacy occurs in two primary forms:
Dichromacy.
Dichromats can match any color they see with some mixture of just two primary colors (in contrast to those with normal sight (trichromats) who can distinguish three primary colors). Dichromats usually know they have a color vision problem, and it can affect their daily lives. Dichromacy in humans includes protanopia, deuteranopia, and tritanopia. Out of the male population, 2% have severe difficulties distinguishing between red, orange, yellow, and green (orange and yellow are different combinations of red and green light). Colors in this range, which appear very different to a normal viewer, appear to a dichromat to be the same or a similar color. The terms protanopia, deuteranopia, and tritanopia come from Greek, and respectively mean "inability to see ("anopia") with the first ("prot-"), second ("deuter-"), or third ("trit-") [cone]".
Anomalous trichromacy.
Anomalous trichromacy is the mildest type of color deficiency, but the severity ranges from almost dichromacy (strong) to almost normal trichromacy (mild). In fact, many mild anomalous trichromats have very little difficulty carrying out tasks that require normal color vision and some may not even be aware that they have a color vision deficiency. The types of anomalous trichromacy include protanomaly, deuteranomaly and tritanomaly. It is approximately three times more common than dichromacy. Anomalous trichromats exhibit trichromacy, but the color