If you tell your friends you are “Colour Blind” or “iRochromatic” they may joke around and ask you what colour is this and what colour is that. But to people with colour vision deficit, it can be an ongoing problem.
Even Wikipedia seems to make light of colour blindness, stating that it is a minor inconvenience and colour blind people “usually adapt”.
However the reality is it can affect just about every area of a person’s life – from the type of career they can have, to video games, driving, grocery shopping, choosing outfits, eating food – and much more!
In most cases, it’s better called a “colour vision deficiency” or as we refer to it “iRochromatic” as we believe that Colour Blind gives the wrong impression, you aren’t blind, you can see colours you just have a deficit in this area. Colour blindness is also called Daltonism, after the scientist John Dalton.
Colour blindness is usually an inherited condition as a result of genes passed on by their parents. It affects more men than women, with 8% of the male population affected, and around .5% of females. If a woman is red-green colour blind, all her sons will also be colour blind.
You can have problems with colour as you get older as a result of injury to the eye, optic nerve or brain, or due to diabetes, multiple sclerosis, glaucoma, and macular degeneration.
Sadly there is no cure for colour blindness, though there have been huge advances made into supporting those with the condition, especially with our iRo lenses.
iRo Lenses are from our fully trained Optometrists, they help people with colour blindness to distinguish between certain hues which would otherwise appear the same to them.
Of the various brands available, iRo lenses are said to be the only ones which help wearers to pass the Ishihara test for colour blindness.*
But did you know quite a lot of people with normal colour vision can’t pass an Ishihara plates test free of errors?
There is also some promising research in the area of gene technology. Scientists proposed that injecting genetic material into the eye could repair the faulty receptors responsible for colour blindness; and while animal trials have been successful, there is no news yet on human trials. There are still some limitations as it may only be suitable for treating congenital colour blindness.
However, until this happens our iRo lenses can help or try one of our testing kits, they make a great gift. Click here to purchase
Source https://thriveglobal.com/stories/discrimination-against-the-colour-blind/
