Color Blindness Basics

Posted by nnlmscr on December 12th, 2017

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The American Academy of Ophthalmology defines color blindness as “when you are unable to see colors in a normal way.”

There are three variants of color blindness:

• Red-green color vision defects which are the most common form.
• Blue-yellow color vision defects.
• Complete absence of color vision.

According to the National Eye Institute, “men are much more likely to be colorblind than women because the genes responsible for the most common, inherited color blindness are on the X chromosome. Males only have one X chromosome, while females have two X chromosomes. In females, a functional gene on only one of the X chromosomes is enough to compensate for the loss on the other. This kind of inheritance pattern is called X-linked, and primarily affects males.”

The National Weather Service has put together a simulation (below) of what each variant of color blindness would see compared to someone with normal vision.

 

Most of the time, color blindness is genetic. There is no treatment, but most people continue with normal activities with little to no limitations.

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