What is The Tritanomaly Test and What Do You Need to Know?
What is The Tritanomaly Test and What Do You Need to Know?
5 August 2024

Life is never easy for a student who looks at the name of a color to know which exactly he is using to scribble on his art paper.

Understanding Blue-Yellow Color (Tritanopia) Vision

What if I say some people cannot distinguish shades of blue, yellow, and green? Yes, this happens; color blindness is real, and it can happen in the affection of your cone cells, which are of three types and cause issues in 3 different color configurations in life.

To diagnose the hues of color blindness, a tritanomaly test is conducted. It is specifically used to test to see if a person has tritanopia, where he has lost his ability to correctly guess the shades of blue, yellow, and green. The color perception of this tone slowly fades away, resulting in Tritan color blindness, a rare type of blue-yellow color vision deficiency.

Why is the tritanomaly test important?

Tritanomaly is the reduced sensitivity to blue light. It causes one to struggle to identify blue-green and purple colors and is less common than other color blindness conditions, such as protanomaly and deuteranomaly. Tritanomaly is not sex-linked color blindness and cannot be treated with gene therapy.

In between, the tritanomaly test is conducted with research toward an accurate diagnosis of blue and yellow light sensitivity. It understands one’s color vision status and prevents unintentional bias in individuals by acknowledging the type and severity of color blindness.

The tritanomaly test is a test associated with tritanopia blue, yellow, and green color sensitivity. Apart from this, there are two other types of color blindness that an individual can have from birth, linked to their X chromosome.

Protanopia and deuteranopia are forms of color blindness that make you sensitive toward the shades of red and green. People with protanopia and deuteranopia both struggle with the same color shade, but deuteranopia is more on the milder side and protanopia on the severity side.

Tritanopia is a syndrome where one faces difficulty on a golf course that is completely green and the sky is completely plain. This rare type of blue-yellow color vision deficiency can only be maintained with a critical color differentiation tritanomaly test.

What is the difference between tritanomaly and tritanopia?

Tritan color blindness includes two forms: tritanomaly (a mild deficiency) and tritanopia (a complete inability to perceive blue light).

Features Tritanomaly Tritanopia
Definition mild form of blue-yellow color blindness blue-yellow color blindness, (dichromacy)
Causes mutation in the S-cones (short-wavelength sensitive cones) complete absence of S-cones in the retina
Sensitivity of color difficulty distinguishing between green and blue, and sometimes red and yellow Issues in blue or yellow, such as green and blue, or purple and red
Common It is quite common in both males and females Tritanopia is extremely rare (with 0.01%) infected

Tritan color blindness is most commonly acquired later in life due to factors such as aging, cataracts, or other medical conditions, rather than being inherited from birth.

Does gene therapy cure blindness? Is it an actual case? If you ask, Washington University anthropologist Amanda Melin says don't be so sure. And she also explains how colorblindness may actually give some animals and people a competitive edge.

Words of a Wise Man on Color Blindness: Bryan Kett

In TEDxTalks, scientist and humorist Bryan Kett shares a witty, poignant tale on the science of color blindness. He pointed out an incident from his school time when kids said red for apple, and he exclaimed, As red as a pickle???

Bryan mentioned that, like the other 250 million people worldwide, I am colorblind. He then starts talking about how standard human genetic makeup makes it a little tough for you to get over existing color blindness. Gene therapy might still help.

In the tritanomaly tests, color dots were organized in a circle. By differentiating between the color gradients and perception, the viewers would be able to see all sorts of shapes and numbers hidden in their patterns. But the colorblind man could not see anything like his own eyes.

Is color blindness hereditary?

Color blindness is found on the X chromosome of the 23rd pair of genes. The genes have nowhere to hide, and color blindness affects 1 in 12 males who have some degree of color blindness.

As X chromosomes, my sister needs two X chromosomes with the same irregularity, and that is not always the case. 1 in 200 females has color blindness, as he continued to explain in his TedxTalks video titled, It’s Not Easy Seeing Green: The Complexities of Color Blindness | Bryan Kett | TEDx Pasadena

But this tritanopia is unlike other color blindness. It affects both genders equally, contrary to protanopia and deuteranopia. He explained how the introduction of new colors has hugely impacted his life. Lavender Mist, Chocolate Cosmos, Pink Champagne—all these are new colors with new confusions—you know exactly what a colorblind will feel like.

But this tritanopia is unlike other color blindness. It affects both genders equally, contrary to protanopia and deuteranopia. He explained how the introduction of new colors has hugely impacted his life. Lavender Mist, Chocolate Cosmos, Pink Champagne—all these are new colors with new confusions—you know exactly what a color-blind will feel like.

Causes of Tritanomaly

Tritanomaly is quite common, resulting from the gene mutation of S-cones in the retina. This causes issues with detecting blue light in the retina. While it remains the common cause, tritanomaly can affect both genders equally. Other factors resulting in color blindness are:

Test Structure of Tritanomaly Test

The tritanomaly test identifies color vision deficiencies, including tritanomaly and tritanopia. If you also have difficulty perceiving blue and yellow hues, worry not; the visual elements like a “C-shaped” Landolt ring will help you configure the optotype in the colored background in this test.

If we talk about the tritanomaly test alone, it identifies a group of color-blind people who have issues with the blue, yellow, and green colors.  Participants must click on the location of the gap, which helps determine their ability to perceive colors accurately with shades of blue, yellow, and green in this test in particular.

Statistical thresholding of the gap with color-blind people becomes difficult. Especially when these Landolt rings are tragically at top, bottom, left, right, and 45-degree angles on blue and yellow backgrounds.

A Tritan color-blind person finds it hard to check if the meat is perfectly cooked. Whether the fruit is ripped or not, grocery shopping is tough. That's why his tritanomaly test operates in a yellow-blue configuration to check your color perception. It also gives hints as to whether you can do the basic chores of life.

Conclusion

If you struggle to guess, “What color is this?”.Worry not, it is time for us to check if you see yellow as white or green as a turquoise hue. It is not a condition to be ashamed of.

Now your friends cannot crack jokes on you for this reason, and there is no more painful bullying in class. It's because you can seek the right treatment plan before your color perception drastically drops to zero.

Don’t suffer alone in silence when you can access color blindness tests online too. For a comprehensive diagnosis and treatment plan, you can contact an eye care specialist near you for further diagnosis. Contact Vision Concern to book your eye care services today!