Pseudoisochromatic plates are the most well known type of color blindness test. The dotted pictures are often referred to as Ishihara plates, becuase Dr. Ishihara developed the first set of such plates which were used all around the world to test for color vision deficiency.

There are many different versions and varieties of pseudoisochromatic plates tests available. Usually they are used as printed tests because it is crucial to get the colors right. Slight changes of the used colors can alter the result and would make a test unreliable. This is also the reason why such tests are usually not used online as display setting, different monitors and surrounding light change the perception of color and therefore the results can’t be trusted on.

Dr. Terrace L. Waggoner, a well known optometrist when it comes to color blindness, developed one of the best known Ishihara plates tests. He made some special research when it comes to pediactric color vision tests and produced Color Vision Testing Made Easy.

His son T.J. Waggoner took now a new way and made some of the pseudoisochromatic plates available as online test. There are two different test sets: One consisting of numbers and a pediactric test consisting of signs. Everybody can take those tests for a small fee. You will find them at Testing Color Vision and don’t forget to use the Colblindor discount code «colblindor» to get 20% off.

The Pros
It’s nice to have a very good Ishihara plates test available online. Of course, you can find many others but usually those are put together as a set of scanned pictures which results in much lower quality and reliability.

I took the test twice, tried to cheat, but couldn’t spot any of the numbers. The quality of the images is really good.

The Cons
There is still no study which could tell us more about the validity and reliability of online color vision tests with uncalibrated computer monitors. I heard they are working on it and I’m looking forward to it. But already now I’m quite sure that an online color blindness test of high quality can be as good as a visit to an eye specialist.

The second thing which I don’t like that much is the result of the test. It just says if you are color blind or not but doesn’t tell anything about the severity. This is something people really are looking for and I would strongly suggest to include this in a future release.

Visit the online pseudoisochromatic plates test by Terrace L. Waggoner at Testing Color Vision (Colblindor discount code: «colblindor») and tell me what you think about it.