Does colour blindness rule out RAF career?
18 May 03 Q A teenager who was hoping to join the RAF came to see me recently. His parents were worried he might be colour blind. I confirmed he did indeed have red/green colour blindness with my Ishihara chart. Is there anything I should do to help him? ABy far the commonest colour vision defect is an impaired discrimination between some shades of red and green. It has an X-linked inheritance so is much more frequent in males (8 per cent) than females (0.4 per cent). The Ishihara test was designed to pick up severe red/green defects and it can miss more subtle defects. But its ease of use and portability has made it the most widely-used colour vision test. Although normal colour vision is useful for a range of everyday tasks, such as driving a car, there are a number of occupations where minimum standards are set. These include civil and military pilots, certain ground crew, sailors, the fire service and electrical engineers. A useful listing of the various visual requirements for the
