Colour Blindness

kingfisherblue

My eleven year old son has occasionally mixed up blue and purple, but today he was convinced that a brown sock was green. When I think back, he has occasionally thought that brown was green, but I have thought that he was messing about. Reading about colour blindness, it appears that in some cases, only certain shades are affected.

My natural father (I am adopted) was colour blind, and talking to family members, he was green/brown colour blind, instead of the more common red/green. As he is not a part of my life, I have never really given much thought to the fact that I could have carried the gene and passsed it to my children.

My son has passed the red/green colour blindness tests at the eye clinic when he was younger. He used to wear glasses from age 3-7, but was never tested for any other types of colour blindness and I don't ever remember being asked about it.

After the holidays, I will contact the optician (my son is due an eye test anyway). If he is affected, as he appears to be, are there any problems associated with colour blindness? Is there any way to train the eye to correctly recognise colours that he has difficulty with?

elona

Try googling "Ishihara colour test" and seeing how that goes.

It should give you an objective way to see if there is a possible problem.

Jinx

Hi Kingfisher

My hubby has the common red/green colour blindness. He doesnt have any additional health problems at all and I think the only real effect it has on him is that he doesnt appreciate the whole colour palette of Scottish autumns! (oh and I think you cant fly a plane at night! lol)

kingfisherblue

Thank you both for your very prompt replies! I have just googled 'Ishihara colourtest' and tried three different website tests on my son (he's up later than usual because we have been out). He couldn't see anything on several of the plates, and on others he could see partial lines but not the full image. He thought the number 45 was a butterfly, but he could only see part of it. I didn't tell him beforehand that the images were numbers. I edfinitely need to take him to the optician!

Jinx, it's good to know that colour blindness doesn't have a major effect on your husband's life. I was worried about future employment, driving, etc.

meritaten

my friend had this problem - his ambition was to be an raf pilot and he couldnt because of this. he had to be content with ground crew. but, after the Raf he has had a good career in - physical therapy.
It may cause a problem in SOME ways but not others...........like anything else, concentrate on the strengths and NOT the weaknesses.

DVardysShadow

elona wrote: »

Try googling "Ishihara colour test" and seeing how that goes.

It should give you an objective way to see if there is a possible problem.

Don't try and self administer! Let the optician do it.

AFAICS, there is no training which can be done to overcome the problem. Colour blind people I have worked with do tend however to manage with some context clues. For example, red green ambiguity is not a problem at traffic lights because the red is at the top and the green is at the bottom and even colour blind it is straightforward to identify which light is illuminated.

It does tend to exclude a certain range of jobs - train driver comes to mind - and electrician or wireman although these are dependent upon employer

kingfisherblue

I'm not going to diagnose it myself, but doing the colour tests means that I will get my son to see the optician as soon as possible. It indicates to me that there might be a problem, not that the problem definitely exists.

Whatever the outcome, I will find something positive to say to my son. I firmly believe in encouraging people to find positives and not negatives (although personally I prefer to know both, but that could be down to the fact that I am curious )

Indie_Kid

I am possibly colourblind (it's a side effect of one of my eye conditions) - however, due to partial sight, the tests are difficult for me to do and for a result to be given.

Colour blindness needn't stop someone driving, because traffic lights can be distinguished by the position of the light. However, it can be an obstacle to particular careers where good colour vision is important, including pilots, electricians, train drivers and some jobs in the printing, fashion and design industries.

from - http://www.bbc.co.uk/health/physical_health/conditions/colour_blindness.shtml

nedmundo

15% of males have some form of colour vision defect. Not much to be done about it, other than avoid certain occupations. Sorry I can't give any more positive advice, but generally, it's nothing to beworried about.

Oldernotwiser

You do need to be aware that certain careers will be difficult (if not impossible) for him; some are obvious but others may come as a surprise.

Mojisola

DVardysShadow wrote: »

Don't try and self administer! Let the optician do it.

I can't imagine any risk or danger from looking at the colour blindness tests available to the public. Why do you say they shouldn't be used?