A Unique Child: Health & Nutrition - Colour-blind?

'What colour is the boat in the picture?' 'Can you pass me the blue plate?' 'Shall we sort the beads by their colour?' 'Can you kick the green ball to Hannah?' These may seem simple enough questions for young children, but not so for those who are colour-blind. And there an estimated 450,000 colour-blind children in the UK.

Colour-blind children can see clearly and in focus but, depending on their type of colour blindness, green can look like brown, dark pink/purples can look like blue, and red may look like black.

Colour-blindness is caused by a person's inability to properly 'see' red, green or, in some instances, blue light. But rather than simply confusing colours (for example, seeing red instead of green), they struggle to differentiate any colours that contain an element of red, green and/or blue (see butterfly pictures).

'Statistically speaking,' says campaigner Kathryn Albany-Ward, 'most people with a moderate form of red/green colour-blindness can identify accurately only five or so coloured pencils from a standard box of 24 pencil crayons.'

Awareness raising

Miss Albany-Ward set up Colour-Blind Awareness after her son was diagnosed with a severe form of colour-blindness and she was shocked to find that the majority of teachers had no training in how to support children with the condition. The organisation recently launched the campaign #1ineveryclassroom.

'Like dyslexia, before it was well known and well understood, colour-blindness is a hidden disability and can lead to children becoming disillusioned with learning or feeling that they are stupid or less able than others - just because they see colours differently.

'The #1ineveryclassroom campaign was launched because one in 12 boys has colour-blindness, so there are approximately 450,000 colour-blind children in UK schools.' That is equivalent to about one in every classroom.

While making progress, recent research by teaching union ATL shows that awareness is still low, with a quarter (26.3 per cent) of ATL members saying that they were unaware of how colour blindness can affect pupils' learning.

More information

Visit www.colourblindawareness.org for more information on causes, types, diagnosis and treatment of colour-blindness.