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World Cup games may challenge those with color blindness

Published  June 22, 2018 8:01am EDT
Health
FOX 2 Detroit

(WJBK) - During the opening World Cup game between Saudi Arabia and host country Russia, people with color blindness couldn't differentiate between the two teams.

The Russian team wore red and Saudi Arabia wore green. The tweets started rolling in, saying the game was a nightmare. That's because those are two colors that people with color blindness most often struggle with.  

Ken Mitton is a researcher at the Oakland University Eye Research Institute. 

"People that are very often color blind are very red-green color blind, so looking at this you won't see the number 7," he says, holding up a colored chart.  

Its seems so simple, but the color chart test is the quickest way to test for color blindness. 

A student researcher at Oakland University realized he was missing out on red, yellow and green when he first failed color chart test. 

"To me, they're just a bunch of random colors. I see yellow, red, pink," says Peter Gaied. 

Color blindness affects more men than women and it's inherited, for the most part. 

"I think about 6 percent of men have red-green colorblindness and it's much, much smaller in women," says Mitton. "That's because our color genes for the cells that detect colored light in our retinas, those genes reside on the X chromosome. So XY, if you're a guy you just have an X chromosome, so you have a much greater chance of inheriting a set of color genes where you're missing one."

Gaied is a huge World Cup fan, rooting for Egypt. He says his vision is not getting in the way of watching the games. 

"When it comes to soccer games I can really see them. For some reason, the colors are just really strong," he says.  

But when it comes to driving around town, it can be tough.  

"At traffic lights I can't distinguish between yellow and red at all," he admits.

For those with colorblindness, driving can indeed be problematic. You also can't be a pilot, and you might have trouble picking out produce. Getting dressed can be tricky, too, but for the most part color blindness is manageable.