We discovered my son was colour blind – specifically, he has Protanopia -when he was seven years old. He had already started school, passed standard eye tests, and nothing seemed amiss but one day, he held up two felt-tip pens and asked, “Is this orange, or is this orange?”
One was orange. The other, bright green.
That moment still makes my heart ache. Like many parents, I didn’t know much about Colour Blindness – more accurately also known as Colour Vision Deficiency (CVD). I didn’t know the signs, how it could affect his learning or that a child could live with this condition for years without anyone noticing.
It turns out my son is not unusual. There are around 450,000 children currently in UK schools living with CVD, yet most are undiagnosed. That’s because screening for colour blindness was quietly removed from the Healthy Child Screening Programme around 2009, following a review based on outdated and flawed evidence.
The result? 80% of children start secondary school having never been screened for CVD, despite 75% having had an NHS eye test and many wearing glasses.
An unseen visual disability
CVD is one of the most common genetic conditions in the world. It affects 1 in 12 boys and 1 in 200 girls. That’s roughly 27,000 new children entering Reception every year with a visual disability most schools don’t know to look for. And, because CVD is not accounted for in SEND statistics, those national figures need 450,000 children added to them before they reflect reality.
Most teachers aren’t trained to recognise CVD. It’s rarely mentioned on PGCE courses, and many educators assume they’ve never taught a colour blind child, despite the statistical fact that there’s at least one in every co-ed classroom of 30. (#1InEveryClassroom)
This is not about blame. It’s about change. The government’s new Start for Life strategy promises to improve access and life chances in early years education. But, if it fails to include mandatory colour vision screening, it will leave hundreds of thousands of children behind before their journey even begins.
Coping strategies can hide the problem
The failure to diagnose CVD can have a significant impact. It’s a non-visible disability, often misread as inattention, confusion, or lack of effort. I’ve heard from parents whose children were wrongly labelled with behavioural problems. In reality, they just couldn’t access the material. When colour is used to communicate meaning, and that colour is unreadable to a child, the barrier is immediate and repeated – every day, in every subject.
Many children, like my son, develop coping strategies. They learn to copy their peers, guess or avoid colour-reliant tasks altogether, but, it comes at a cost – to their confidence, progress, and emotional wellbeing.
What’s more, most parents and educators don’t realise that children with CVD are legally entitled to reasonable adjustments under the Equality Act 2010 – in school, exams, and the workplace. Due to misleading government guidance, very few cases are raised or supported properly. This affects children and teachers alike: thousands of educators are colour blind too and also deserve support.
Not good with colours
Anyway, here’s the good news: teachers don’t need to know what type of colour blindness a pupil has. Whether it’s Protanopia, Deuteranomaly, or something rarer, the support strategies are nearly always the same, and they’re simple. The key rule? Never use colour alone to convey meaning. Always include a label, symbol, or pattern.
Interventions are low effort but high impact. They improve access not only for colour blind pupils, but for everyone. When we design with accessibility in mind from the start, we create better learning environments for all.
My son is now 17 and preparing for his A levels. He has the access arrangements he needs, but only because we knew to push for them. Most children aren’t so fortunate, and many don’t even know they’re colour blind at all because they were born seeing the world this way.
They don’t realise others see it differently. They grow up thinking they’re “just not good with colours,” in the same way some children believe they’re not good at numbers. It chips away at their self-esteem over time and many people don’t know it can affect safety too.
We need rapid and serious change. CVD is a real disability. It affects learning across the curriculum, including in sport and can coexist with other SEND needs – compounding issues further. Most screening tools for other SEND don’t account for it, and yet it’s one of the easiest things to identify and support.
Let’s act on that.
