Dr. Terrace L. Waggoner is a well known optometrist and researcher when it comes to color vision and color deficiency testing. He developed different tests mostly based on pseudoisochromatic plates and has an online appearance at Colorblind Home Page, which has a lot of very useful information concerning color blindness.

During the last year his son T.J. Waggoner started an online color vision testing possibilty together with his father. This test of course is based on the research done by Dr. Waggoner and consists of a set of pseudoisochromatic test plates. I had the possibilty to take this online color vision deficiency test and would like to give you some insights into the test and as well I would like to share my thougths about it with you.

I already reported about this new online test possibilty at Online Pseudoisochromatic Plates Color Vision Test. Since then they made some major improvements on the test and it can give you some more detailed results on your actual color vision deficiency type and severity.

So first about the test itself: It consists of four different parts, starting with a general color blindness test the second to fourth part are related to the three different main types of color vision deficiency: Protan defects, deutan defects and tritan defects. Each part has a set of pseudoisochromatic plates (the circle pictures with the dots) with some “hidden” numbers. Now what you have to do is:

1. Have a look at the plate (you’ll get only 2 seconds to do that).
2. Choose on the answer page, which number you have seen. Or choose nothing, if you haven’t seen anything at all.
3. Press Next and you’ll be shown the next plate.

At the end of the test you’ll get a result sheet which shows your correct and wrong answers for each section. On the right side you can see my personal test result.

As you can see, the four different parts are shown each seperately. I haven’t seen a lot — nothting new to me — but what I like is the extra feedback that according to this test result I’m a Severe Protan (Red-Blind), which correlates with all my other results perfectly.

Are this test results reliable?

At this point it is getting a bit more complicated. Can you believe in this result? Does it tell you the truth? Or is it just another unreliable online color vision test?

Unfortunately nobody can tell you the truth at this point. It is still very well known, that if you want to get to most precise result, you have to check your vision specialist and take an anomoloscope color vision test — the golden standard when it comes to color blindness testing.

But this new possibilty could get closer and closer to a very good result. Of course you shouldn’t cheat, but I can tell you it’s not easy (if you don’t have somebody besided you which tells your the right answer) and you would only cheat yourself anyway.

There are no academic results around yet for this new test. This always takes quite a long time. But some studies have started, it looks like if the FAA has also a look into it and some other studies try to find out if this could be a new possibilty for color vision deficiency testing.

If you would like to try out this new online color blindness test at www.Testing Color Vision.com just use my discount code «colblindor» and you’ll get 20% off!

I now that displays are differently calibrated and therefore you can get different test result while using different computers or electronic devices. But are those differences not getting smaller and smaller? And are vision specialists not as well a little bit error-prone? Which is better? — What do you think…