Color Vision Testing Made Easy®

New Pediatric Color Vision Test For Three to Six Year Old Pre-School Children

by Dr. Terrace L. Waggoner

Several years ago my son T.J., who was six years old at the time, came home from school with a note from the school nurse saying he was “Colorblind”.

Being an optometrist, I should have already known he had a color deficiency. I thought back to when T.J. was in pre-school and kindergarten. His teachers mentioned he was having difficulty learning concepts such as grouping same or different colored objects. I thought it was a learning problem. I did not think it could be a visual problem because at age 4, before he started pre-school, I had T.J. given a complete eye examination by a pediatric eye doctor who was a friend of mine.

I told my friend about the note from the school nurse. She confided that she didn’t test the color vision of pre-school children because of time restraints and the difficulty of testing such a young age group. This is the case with most vision care professionals, and why I developed “Color Vision Testing Made Easy”.

The new pediatric pseudoisochromatic (different colored dots) color vision test contains 14 plates. The simple objects (circle, star, square) and pictures (boat, balloon, dog) make color vision testing fun, quick and easy for all age groups – especially 3 to 6 year old pre-school children.

Susan Cotter, O.D. (Pediatric Specialist, Southern CA College of Optometry) and David Lee, Ph.D, O.D. (Color Vision Specialist, Illinois College of Optometry) completed a validation study of Color Vision Testing Made Easy. They proved it was a valid color vision test and 100% Ishihara compatible. Testability of kindergarten children was 100% with no false positives.

Color Vision Testing Made Easy was also used in a special study by Graham Erickson, O.D. (Pacific University College of Optometry) and Sandra Block, O.D. (Illinois College of Optometry) to test the color vision of Special Olympic Athletes in the 1997 World Winter Games in Toronto, Canada; the Regional European Swim Competition in Spain; and the Summer Games in Texas and Massachusetts, USA. They demonstrated the new color vision test, because of it’s simplicity, could be used to detect color deficiencies in mentally handicapped patients. The study was sponsored by the American Optometric Association Sports Vision Section and Special Olympic International. Click here to see a summary of both studies: Publications

To order “Color Vision Testing Made Easy” simply click on the picture below.

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