All you need to know about Color Blindness

Color blindness is a condition where the eye fails to recognize or cannot see red, blue or green colors or a combination of these three colors.

Color blindness as the name suggests is a color vision problem and is not a very common vision problem.

It does make things a little more difficult to function in their daily life. For example studies will take a lot more effort as the child cannot see certain colors.

Why does it happen?

It happens when the retina in the eye lacks certain cone cells that help in the identification of color.

Causes of absence of cone cells:

• Hereditary
• Accidents
• Side-effects of certain medicines
• Eye diseases like glaucoma, cataracts, muscular degeneration etc…
• Aging

Symptoms of color blindness:

• Cannot differentiate between reds, blues or even greens. You may be able to see some colors but not the rest.
• You see colors but not as many as others. You might not even know that you see colors differently from that of others.
• You see lesser colors as compared to other people.
• In very rare cases, people can see things only in black, white and grey.

Treatment:

There is no treatment for color blindness. People can function normally with this condition so it is not taken as seriously as the other eye disorders.

• Some people opt to wear colored contact lenses to help show a slight differentiation between colors.
• Some people find they can see a little color better when their eyes are screened away from bright light or glare.

Once you identify color blindness, do head to the nearest hospital so that they can figure out what you can see or not.

And if you have discovered that your child has color blindness, do inform the school authorities about it, so that they can be patient with him or her as they will be a bit slower in reading than others and also make sure he gets seated in places where it is less bright.