What is Colour Deficiency?
Approximately 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women live with a colour deficiency, which, until recently, had no remedy. Colour blindness is a colour deficiency defined by the inability to perceive differences between specific colours.
Your eyes see colour through 3 different light-sensitive cones in the eyes. Each cone is responsible for detecting a particular wavelength of light, which corresponds to a colour.
Colour blindness or deficiency occurs when one of the cones doesn’t function correctly, function at all, or have no functioning cones. Most people with colour blindness can see some colours, but which colours and how well they can see them depend on the type of colour blindness they have.
Individuals with anomalous trichromacy have all 3 types of functioning cones, but one doesn’t work correctly. This results in reduced sensitivity to one kind of light, making it difficult to distinguish a specific colour from others.
The most common types of colour blindness are types of anomalous trichromacy, protanomaly and deuteranomaly. Both result in an inability to distinguish reds, greens, browns, and oranges well and is often referred to as “red-green colour blindness.”
People that have dichromacy only have 2 functioning cones in their eyes. Dichromacy creates the inability to perceive colours within one specific section of the light spectrum. These often result in not seeing red, green, or blue hues, depending on which cone is missing.
Types of dichromacy include protanopia (the inability to perceive red light), deuteranopia (the inability to perceive green light), and tritanopia (the inability to perceive blue light).
Monochromatic vision occurs when zero functioning cones are present. Someone with monochromacy will see the world in varying shades of black and white. However, this type of colour blindness is extremely rare, occurring only in approximately 1 out of 33,000 people. People with monochromacy need to wear very dark glasses, even indoors, as they are incredibly sensitive to light.
