I just released one of the oldest, definitely the most well known and definitely by far the most widely used color blindness test on earth: Ishihara 38 Plates CVD Test.

Unfortunately this test is not as good as one would think of:

Ishihara-Color-Vision-Deficiency-Test-Book — Ishihara Plates Test Booklet

The original version detects just forms of red-green color blindness.
The test is to selective: Even people with normal color vision may fail.
It is based on a printed booklet. One has to be very careful with the handling.
Often even eye doctors don’t know how to handle it correctly…

The original test is distributed as printed booklet and it started its tour around the world from Japan early last century. Dr. Shinobu Ishihara published the 38 plates as first version of his test, which is still known under the name Ishihara plates test. After the first test he also released a shorter 24 and even a quick 14 plate version of it.

The online version of this test is not as good as it could be. The scanning of the printed plates altered the colors and therefore the result is not as meanigful as with some other tests which you can find in my arrangement of color blindness tests.

Ishihara-Color-Blindness-Test — Online Ishihara CVD Test

When I take the test myself, I can see some numbers in some of the plates, but a lot of them are just a bunch of dots for me. If my children watch me doing so they always have to giggle, as they can see all the numbers and lines in all of the plates. Of course I know, I’m strongly red-blind and have quite some issues with colors. But in some plates I can’t see the slightes hint of a number! This makes me really think, as my kids easily spot all of them—even if my daughter just recently learned the numbers at all.

Try the Online Ishihara 38 Plates Edition Color Blindness Test yourself and see how you will perform—or not. With this online version of the test it is even possible to share your result with your friends on Facebook, Twitter, or by Email and let them also try the test themselves.

WSJ: New Outlook on Colorblindness

November 6, 2012

@colblindor

Publications 1 Comment

Last week Melinda Beck from the Wall Street Journal called me to learn more about Color Blindness. We chatted for about half an hour and had a nice talk about all the different aspects of color vision deficiency.

The video below shows vision scientist Dr. Jay Neitz and WSJ’s Melinda Beck discuss on Lunch Break about Color Blindness. You can view the video below (intro is 15sec. of advertisement – sorry for that):

The online article New Outlook on Colorblindness is a nice summary of all the different aspects of color blindness: handicaps, soon to be seen genetic tests, possibility of genetic cure, apps, tools and even a short note on Color Name & Hue, a tool here from Colblindor which helps you to identify color names and its corresponding main color hue.

Color Blindness Simulation in Short Films

November 1, 2012

@colblindor

Carlos Hernandez Matas created in 2011 three short films demonstrating the three main forms of color blindness: Deuteranopia, Protanopia and Tritanopia. There are many simulators for color blindness available online. One of them can be found right here on Colblindor: Coblis — Color Blindness Simulator.

Carlos explaines how he did those videos:

This is a program that retrieves images from a live video feed or from a video file stored in a drive and performs in real-time a color transformation to show how the video would be seen by one of the three kinds of dichromat color blind people. In this video, it’s shown the transformation for people with tritanopia.

Deuteranopia

Protanopia

Tritanopia

More information can be found on his website at carlos.hernandez.im.

Color Vision Deficiency Tutorial

October 29, 2012

@colblindor

Publications 1 Comment

Richmond Products - Color Vision Deficiency — Richmond Products – Color Vision Deficiency

Richmond Products is one of the big sellers of examination products for ophthalmology, optometry, pediatrics, neurology, and occupational medicine. But specially in the field of color vision they are strong and offer a wide variety from different products, ranging from color arrangement tests, pediatric color vision tests, the world famous pseudoisochromatic plates tests (also often called Ishihara plates tests), and a lot more.

As color vision deficiency is still a topic where a lot of people can learn a lot more, they put together a tutorial for everyone free to download. The tutorial was put together with the help of well known researchers in the field of CVD. Specially Dr. Jay Neitz and Dr. Maureen Neitz, which were in the news with their breakthrough in The Cure of Color-Blind Monkeys.

The color blindness tutorial includes the following four chapters:

Causes and Effects
Detection and Diagnosis
Toxicology Effects on CVD & their Detection
Treatment, ‘Compensation’ & Cure

With its packed 14 pages it definitely covers many topics related to color blindness. If you would like to learn more about CVD it’s definitely worth reading. And if you read as well my Free eBook an Color Blindness, you’ll get a broad understanding on the topic.

Download: Color Vision Deficiency – A Concise Tutorial for Optometry and Ophthalmology

Was Vincent Van Gogh Colorblind?

October 25, 2012

@colblindor

People Pics 5 Comments

The Hokkaido Color Universal Design Organization has a “Color Vision Experience Room” which filters out parts of the light to give you the impression of how colorblind people see the world. In this room Kazunori Asada spotted some paintings from Vincent Van Gogh and from there on the idea arose to make some tests, if Van Gogh might have had some form of color vision defiency.

Earlier on Kazunori Asada already developed a tool to simulate different forms of color vision defiency. With the help of this tool he was interested to see, if the impression of some paintings of Van Gogh will change, if they were run through the program.

In his article The Day I Saw Van Gogh’s Genius in a New Light he covers the following:

One of my friends who has protanomal color vision, a designer and painter, said this to me:

“It’s wonderful, isn’t it? We color deficient people, actually better than color normal people, understand van Gogh’s true nature and appreciate he is the genius of geniuses. In our opinion, van Gogh surely had color vision deficiency. Therefore, color deficient people can better understand his pictures.”

I considered this. After returning home, I viewed van Gogh’s works using the “Chromatic Vision Simulator” software which I had developed. However, the images simply lost their color and the sublime impression I got in the “Color Vision Experience Room” was missing.

Then it occurred to me to ask – Is my friend partially color vision deficient (anomalous trichromat)? Perhaps using a strong color vision deficiency (dichromat) simulation was the wrong approach. How about carrying out the simulation by removing only a specific portion of normal color vision, maybe then I could see van Gogh’s works in that light?

Hereafter two simulations of Van Gogh’s paintings. On the left side you’ll see the original, on the right side the protanomal simulation (also called red-weakness):

As I am also strongly red-blind I can’t see any difference in the paintings. Looking at them makes me think, that they look completely normal and I don’t see any very strange color arrangements in the paintings.

You can read the whole article of Kazunori Asada at: The Day I Saw Van Gogh’s Genius in a New Light. This article also includes some more paintings with their corresponding color vision deficient simulation.

Ishihara’s Test for Colour Deficiency: 38 Plates Edition

October 22, 2012

@colblindor

Tests 7 Comments

Dr Shinobu Ishihara introduced in 1917—almost 100 years ago—the most well known color blindness test. Each of his tests consists of a set of colored dotted plates, each of them showing either a number or a path. Since then this is the most widely used color vision deficiency test and still used by most optometrists and ophthalmologists all around the world.

There are other color blindness tests available, but none of them is as famous as the Ishihara plates. It is also well known, that even people with normal color vision sometimes struggle with this test. But nevertheless this plates are still in use in the absence of any better and still affordable color vision test.

Hereafter the 38 Ishihara Plates will be shown. If you would like to take an online test, please visit my collection of Online Color Blindness Tests.

Personal comment: I believe that this scanned plates have some shifts in color. They don’t really consist of the same colors as the original versions. With these plates I would suffer from deuteranomly as any other test shows that I’m suffering from protanomaly.

There exist four different types of plates:

Vanishing design: Only people with good color vision can see the sign. If you are colorblind you won’t see anything.
Transformation design: Color blind people will see a different sign than people with no color vision handicap.
Hidden digit design: Only colorblind people are able to spot the sign. If you have perfect color vision, you won’t be able to see it.
Classification design: This is used to differentiate between red- and green-blind persons. The vanishing design is used on either side of the plate, one side for deutan defects an the other for protans.

Try your best! If you can see all of them you are definitely color abnormal, as some of them should only be seen by colorblind people and others only by non-colorblind ones :-)

Short Film: Color Blindness Explained for Children

October 18, 2012

@colblindor

Children Stories 2 Comments

Quite a while ago Laura Evans created a nine minute documentary short film on the topic What is it Like to be Color Blind? The film gives everyone some insights on color blindness, including an interview with a colorblind person.

Shortly after that she also produced a children’s version, which I would like to show you hereafter:

What is it like to be colorblind?

If you wish to learn more about this project, you can visit Laura Evans website at No Such Thing as Color diretly.

Colour Vision Defective Pilots Association

October 15, 2012

@colblindor

Professions No Comments

I suppose the most prominent job and its problematics when it comes to any type of color vision deficiency is the job of beeing a pilot. Many young men wish to become a pilot and to fly airplanes but struggle on their way because of their color blindness.

This topic has been discussed on Colblindor already quite often. Either if it is about a Study on How Color Blindness Affects Pilots, about an Unreliable Secondary Color Vision Tests for Pilot Candidates or about a New Color Blindness Tests Sets Minimal Requirements for Professional Flight Crew. There is even some form of Color Blind Testing Guide for Pilot Applicants and some discussions going on in the Color Blindness Forum, for example the question: Should colorblind people be admitted as pilots?

In March 2012 Dr Arthur Pope incorporated the Colour Vision Defective Pilots Association. The goal of this Association is to tackle the issue of a confuse approach when it comes to the regulations concerning color vision, to question its standards all around the world and to give support to those who feel unfairly treated as colorblind pilot candidates.

Dr Arthur Pape who was instrumental in two successful legal challenges in Australia in the 1980’s regarding the color perception standard in aviation. He is also coordinating actual legal challenges and wants to have the discriminatory standards removed. On the CVDPA Website he makes the following statement:

The aviation colour perception standard is a regulatory device that we say contributes nothing to the safety of aviation and the travelling public. It has no place in the modern aviation environment

It unfairly discriminates against many tens of thousands of individuals world-wide who have defective colour vision, who want to be professional pilots and who are perfectly capable of doing so.

The Colour Vision Defective Pilots Association’s Mission

Fight for the rights of all colour vision defective pilots to have an unrestricted career path by challenging the Aviation Colour Perception Standard.
To show that the aviation colour perception standard is founded on discredited assumptions and has no evidentiary basis
Establish a fighting fund from subscriptions, grants and sponsorship that will be used to fund challenges to the aviation colour perception standards in all worldwide jurisdictions
Promote and disseminate the outcomes of two existing pivotal court cases in Australia where most CVD pilots now enjoy full and unrestricted careers, at all levels of professional aviation
Give voice and organization to the countless thousands of CVD individuals and work to secure an end to irrational regulation

If you wish to get further information on this topic, to read some articles, to contribute your own personal story or to support the CVDPA, please visit their website at Colour Vision Defective Pilots Association – www.cvdpa.com.

Map Accessibilty Survey for Colorblind People

October 11, 2012

@colblindor

Academic Publications No Comments

Colored maps can be a major source of frustation for colorblind people. While research has been done by cartographers, many maps still disregard the special requirements for allowing a map to be read with a reduced color space. Online maps are no exception even though theoretically the dynamic nature of them could allow for options like multiple color schemes or even selective highlighting of specific map features.

Johannes Kröger, a student of geomatics from Germany, has been working on the street color rendering of the map on openstreetmap.org to analyse and improve its accessibility for people with color vision deficiencies. To test his hypotheses and the work he has done in his bachelor thesis he is currently looking for participants in an » Online Survey «.

The survey takes about 20 minutes, longer for some people, shorter for others. Simple map images are presented with the task of identifying street classes. It is a bit tedious and repetitive but that is the price for hopefully solid scientific results. It can be paused at any time.

Special interest would be in tritanopic (“blueblindness”) and achromatic (“colorblind”) people, since the participants so far have been mostly (expectedly) the more common forms of color vision deficiency in the red/green area. The survey is not suited for people with heavily affected focus eyesight though, so that might sadly limit the possibilities for participation of the completely colorblind.

Please join the online survey of Johannes Kröger and see, if you can see it…

Ishihara Plates on Your Fingernails

October 10, 2012

@colblindor

Pics No Comments

The colorful Ishihara plates are the most well known color blindness test of the world. They consist of a pattern of colored dots and hide a number or image for any colorblind observer.

On the other hand we can see more and more artwork on fingernails. There are contests held on diverse topics. One of them was about the dotting tool, a special tool which can be used to paint dots on your nails.

On of the contributors decided to use the dotting tool to create some Ishihara Fingernails….

Personally I couldn’t imagine the create such a fine artwork. And to know, that it will be gone after some days, is even more impressive. Thanks for sharing this cool work and if you like, you can find a lot more of those artworks at Goose’s Glitter.