Types of Color Vision Deficiency (2024)

FAQs

Types of Color Vision Deficiency? ›

“The Deuteran (green) and Protan (red) inefficiencies are the most common types of color blindness. Blue-type color blindness is possible, but extremely rare.” Red-green color blindness is primarily caused by a defective X-chromosome, which means that men are much more likely to experience CVD.

There are 2 types of blue-yellow color vision deficiency: Tritanomaly makes it hard to tell the difference between blue and green and between yellow and red. Tritanopia makes someone unable to tell the difference between blue and green, purple and red, and yellow and pink.

The most common form of color deficiency is red-green. This does not mean that people with this deficiency cannot see these colors altogether, they simply have a harder time differentiating between them, which can depend on the darkness or lightness of the colors. Another form of color deficiency is blue-yellow.

Monochromatism, dichromatism, and anomalous trichromatism are the three types of color blindness. These can be further broken up into tritanopia, deuteranopia, and protanopia to determine which colors and hues are not visible based on the cones present in the retina.

If you have color blindness (color vision deficiency), it means you see colors differently than most people. Most of the time, color vision deficiency makes it hard to tell the difference between certain colors. Usually, color vision deficiency runs in families.

Blue cone monochromacy

This is the rarest form of color blindness. With this type, you don't have working L cones or M cones. You only have S cones. It's hard to tell the difference between colors, and you see mostly grays.

About Colorblindness/Color Deficiency

Although considered only a minor disability, slightly fewer than 10% of all men suffer some form of colorblindness (also called color deficiency), so this audience is very widespread. Colorblind users are unable to distinguish certain color cues, often red versus green.

The most common color deficiency is red-green, with blue-yellow deficiency being much less common. It is rare to have no color vision at all. You can inherit a mild, moderate or severe degree of the disorder. Inherited color deficiencies usually affect both eyes, and the severity doesn't change over your lifetime.

The life expectancy of a color-blind person is normal. There are no other abnormalities associated with the condition.

There are no treatments for most types of color vision difficulties, unless the color vision problem is related to the use of certain medicines or eye conditions. Discontinuing the medication causing your vision problem or treating the underlying eye disease may result in better color vision.

What is the purest form of color blindness? ›

Rod monochromacy (Achromatopsia)

This is the rarest and most severe form of color blindness in which there are no functional cone cells with working photopigments. People with rod monochromacy can only see black, white, and gray.

Causes of Color Blindness

This is called a congenital condition. Congenital color vision defects usually pass from mother to son. These defects are due to partial or complete lack of cones in the retina. Cones help you to distinguish the colors red, green, and blue.

Most color-blind people can clearly see things like others, but they are unable to fully “appreciate or see” red, green, or blue light. There are extremely rare cases where people are unable to see any color at all, but the most common color blindness is red-green color blindness.

By far the most common form of color blindness is congenital red–green color blindness (Daltonism), which includes protanopia/protanomaly and deuteranopia/deuteranomaly. These conditions are mediated by the OPN1LW and OPN1MW genes, respectively, both on the X chromosome.

You can be born with colour vision deficiency, or it can start at any age. If your child has colour vision deficiency you may not notice any symptoms, but you may notice your child: uses the wrong colours when drawing or painting, for example, drawing purple leaves on trees.

Color plate test

This is the most common type of color vision deficiency test. During this test, your eye doctor will ask you to look at a circle made of many different colored dots. Inside the circle is a shape that's also made of dots — like a number, a letter, or a squiggly line.

There are seven official diagnoses of color blindness: four different types of color blindness fall in the red-green category, two are in the blue-yellow spectrum and one version describes a type of vision completely lacking in color.

Types and Incidence of Deficient Color Vision

1) Red/green deficiencies are by far the most common (about 8% of the male population). There are two types of red/green deficiencies, protanopes (and protanomalous) and deuteranopes (and deuteranomalous).

Partial color blindness, e.g. red-green blindness

If a person suffers from partial color blindness, a portion of the sensory cells required to perceive colors are either non-existent or don't work. Dichromacy refers to someone who only has two types of functional cones, monochromacy to a person who only has one.

Colour vision deficiency (colour blindness) is where you see colours differently to most people, and have difficulty telling colours apart. There's no treatment for colour vision deficiency that runs in families, but people usually adapt to living with it.