HARTFORD, Conn. — Color blindness is quite common, but it’s not evenly spread between men and women. Far from it.
“Color blindness is actually pretty common and much more common in boys,” said Dr. Paul Rychwalski, an Ophthalmologist at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center.
He said it affects about 8 percent of males, but thanks to genetics, it affects only about 0.8 percent of females.
Despite the name, total color-blindness is extremely rare. Almost always, what we call color blindness is actually one of a kind of color deficiencies, thanks to a missing component in the eye’s color receptors. Dr. Rychwalski said red-green color blindness is one of the most common types of color deficiency.
“The colors that are affected are that red and the green, which is interesting because that’s the color of our stoplights, so that’s one of the challenges that someone with a color deficiency can have,” he said.
By no means is color deficiency a debilitating condition, but it can cause inconveniences in subtle ways.
“Picking out clothes properly, deciding if fruit is ripe or not these are some of the common things that a person with a color deficiency could come across from day to day,” Dr. Rychwalski said, “a lot of times it will come up in early school age that a school teacher will notice a child having trouble with crayons or different colored paper, picking out their socks in the morning or mislabeling street signs or a shirt.”
While color deficiencies aren’t currently curable, they are treatable. Perhaps you’ve seen some viral videos of color-blind people putting on special glasses, like ones with the brand name “Enchroma,” and then getting emotional as they see colors they otherwise couldn’t.
Dr. Rychwalski said he’s seen those types of reactions before, but it’s success is no guarantee.
“It’s a very subjective response, in my experience,” he said, “some people put the glasses on and really see no different and some have a more profound effect on their vision and it’s very helpful.”
