Lea Hyvarinen, MD, was at the Good-Lite office in Elgin, IL, last week. During her busy visit, she lectured at the Illinois College of Optometry (ICO). Good-Lite thanks Sandy Block, OD, Associate Dean at ICO, for arranging the lecture. Dominick Maino, OD, Professor of Optometry at ICO, made good use of his cell phone and posted a portion of Dr. Lea’s lecture on YouTube. Dr. Lea Hyvarinen on YouTube
Many people think anyone labeled as “colorblind” only sees black and white -
like watching a black and white movie or television. This is a big
misconception and not true. It is extremely rare to be totally color blind
(monochromasy - complete absence of any color sensation). There are many different types and degrees of colorblindness - more correctly called color vision deficiencies.
Five to eight per cent (depending on the study you quote) of the men and one
half per cent of the women of the world are born colorblind. That’s as high
as one out of twelve men and one out of two hundred women.
Protanomalous or deuteranomalous individuals can usually pass as a normal
observer in everyday activities. They may make occasional errors in color
names, or may encounter difficulties in discriminating small differences in
colors, but usually they do not perform or see colors very differently from
the normal except on color vision tests.
The protanope and deuteranope, on the other hand, can be severely color
deficient. The real problem, as a protanope or deuteranope may see it, is
there are far too many hue names (color names) used by most people without
any obvious basis for using one instead of another. Why call something
“orange” when it doesn’t look different in any way from something else
called green, tan, beige, or any of several other color names?