How color blindness may affect children
Some kids may have this eye-related condition. While there's no cure, eye care providers may still treat it. Here's how.
Life is normally full of color — red roses, blue sky, yellow sun. But things could look a lot different for people who are colorblind, especially children.
How might a child be affected by color blindness in the park or at school? How will parents know if their child may be colorblind, and what might they do about it?
Color blindness — what eye care providers might refer to as “color vision deficiency” — is an inability to distinguish between certain color shades, the brightness of certain colors or see colors at all.1
Color blindness tends to run in families. While there’s no cure, there may be some ways eye care providers may manage it.2
Below, learn more about how color blindness may affect children, and how their parents might get them the treatment they need.
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Might there be different types of color blindness?
Color blindness comes in several types, the most common of which is called red-green color blindness. That’s when shades of red might look green, shades of green might look red, or the two colors might be indistinguishable.1
Another less common type is known as blue-yellow color blindness. That means people might find it difficult to distinguish between the colors blue and green, yellow and red, purple and red, and yellow and pink.1
In rare cases, some people might have complete color vision deficiency, which means they can’t see any color at all.2
What might cause color blindness?
To understand the causes of color blindness, it’s important to understand how the eye sees color in the first place. When light hits the area at the back surface of the eye, called the retina, it may activate 2 types of cells called rods and cones:3
- Rod cells may only detect light and dark, and they may be sensitive to low levels of light.
- Cone cells may detect color concentrated near the center of someone’s vision, and there may be 3 types of cone cells that see color: red, green and blue. The brain may use the cone cells to determine what color the eyes may be seeing.
Color blindness may occur when one or more of the color cone cells are missing, not working or detect different colors than usual. The severity of a person’s color blindness depends on how many cone cells are missing. So, in the rare cases when someone may not see any color at all, all 3 cone cells would be missing.
Other causes of color blindness may include:2, 3
- Certain diseases
- Certain medications
- Eye injuries caused by lasers
- High blood pressure
- Radiation treatments
- Retinal detachment (when the retina is pulled away from its usual position in the eye)
- Certain kinds of brain tumors (especially those that affect the optic nerve or put pressure on the brain)
- Strokes affecting the eye or brain
How might children become colorblind?
In children, color blindness is most commonly inherited from a parent, says Chris Lievens, O.D., director of clinical research at Southern College of Optometry. That may be referred to as congenital color blindness.3
“Boys are more commonly affected than girls, and it most commonly comes from the mother’s lineage,” says Dr. Lievens.
While mothers don’t always experience color blindness, they may carry the trait and pass it along to their son or daughter. That has a higher chance of happening if the father also experiences some kind of color blindness.
There may also be non-inherited causes of color blindness. For example, someone might experience sudden changes in color vision or adult-onset color blindness. Those cases could be a cause for concern, says Dr. Lievens. “There are a number of diseases in which color vision is slowly or abruptly interrupted,” he says.
These might include:3
- Alzheimer’s disease
- Diabetes
- Glaucoma
- Macular degeneration
- Parkinson’s disease
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How early might color blindness be detected in children?
“We have age-appropriate tests,” says Dr. Lievens. These may be used as soon as the child can talk and has learned the names of colors. The condition ranges from the child only seeing in black and white to only seeing subtle differences in full color vision, he notes. “Rarely is a child colorblind where they don’t see any colors.”
Parents may pick up on color-related vision issues in their children when reading a story or describing something that their child says they see as a different color, Dr. Lievens says. Some children may even try to hide their color blindness.2
How might children be impacted by color blindness?
Just because a child may have color blindness doesn’t mean they’re somehow “defective.” “It doesn’t mean it’s bad or abnormal. It’s just slightly different,” Dr. Lievens explains.
Also, research shows mixed and ongoing evidence that color blindness may have a negative impact on children who have it.4
That said, there may be a few ways that color blindness could affect children. These include:
- At school: Children who are colorblind may have a harder time reading from chalkboards, if their school still uses them.2 (Many schools now use whiteboards or digital displays.)
- At play: Some computer and video games use colors to differentiate “good guys” from “bad guys” or present certain goals. Children with color-related vision issues may not have as much fun (or may be confused) by games like these.5
- At work: When kids eventually grow up, they may need to perceive colors to get certain jobs, such as pilot or electrician, notes Dr. Lievens. So, color blindness may disqualify them from those jobs down the road.
How might children manage color blindness?
First and foremost, if a parent thinks their child may be colorblind, it’s a good idea for them to schedule an appointment with their eye care provider. They may be able to do a vision check, including testing a child for color-related vision issues. The eye care provider may then make a diagnosis and set up a management plan.
A child’s eye care provider may also manage color blindness with special filtered lenses or contacts. This may help children who have color blindness tell certain colors apart.
Dr. Lievens emphasizes that the effects of color blindness may be managed in children. Besides seeking out an eye care provider, he also recommends that parents may:
- Ensure that their children can see and read classroom materials — and talk to their teachers if they’re struggling.
- Help children memorize the order of colored objects such as traffic lights, which may be important for safety while crossing streets and when riding a bike with their friends.
- Label colored items such as clothing so that children may easily dress themselves.
- Provide older children with smartphone apps and/or digital devices that may help them identify color.5
In short, children may still be able to live normal lives with color blindness. With the help of an eye care provider and management options, all of the colors of the rainbow may come into focus.
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Sources:
- Types of color deficiency National Eye Institute, August 2023.
- Color blindness National Eye Institute, November 2023.
- What is color blindness? American Academy of Ophthalmology, September 2022.
- Pediatric and school-age vision screening in the United States: Rationale, components, and future directions Children, March 2023.
- Color blindness in the digital gaming landscape: Addressing critical issues and research gaps European Conference on Games Based Learning, September 2023.
