The Science Behind Different Grades of Color Vision Deficiency AKA Color Blindness

In his video “How Color Blindness Works“, narrator Tom Blatherwick offers a really good explanation of color vision deficiency, its genetic causes, the varying grades of color blindness and how he, as someone who is color vision deficient, sees the world.

The most common type of colour blindness is anomalous trichromacy, where one of the cones is impaired. People with a dodgy L-cone have protanomaly. …When incoming light is detected in this range the difference between the two detected signals is much smaller, meaning the brain struggles to determine the exact colour. This is why I can sometimes see a specific green as orange, but don’t see orange as green, making is impossible to “learn” your way round it.