City University Research Project
Hi All
I thought I'd post a note following my visit to City Uni yesterday. When I got my medical (and failed Ishihara) in January, I subsequently went to Gatwick and failed both lanterns. They put my name forward for the City Uni research project, and after a few months wait I went down there.
First of all was good old Ishihara, a few different variations of, all of which I got some wrong. Second was a test based on the sample they have on their website where you follow the coloured square around the screen. Completely different to the website version though; it's designed to give a really accurate evaluation of where your colour deficiency is and to what extent you are affected. The conclusion of this, and I quote "Very mild dueteronomy (sp?) and your green cone wavelength recognition is left of centre, which will mean green/white differenciation is where you'll have trouble". Nice to finally get something other than "sorry sir, you've failed, now **** off".
After a couple more tests including the anomoloscope we moved onto their really useful test, the PAPI simulator. I got 100% of these right. The idea behind the project is that they can build a picture of what level of deficiency can be classed as acceptable, instead of just a black & white approach. The current CAA approach is based purely on the fact that until recently there just wasn't a satisfactory enough method of establishing where you were on the scale of perfect to useless.
I was told that when the new system is adopted I would be one of the lucky ones to benefit from it as my defect is very mild. It's certainly reassuring to know that change and common sense are both in the pipeline.
The project is currently about half way through their sample subjects, so I would encourage anyone in the same boat as me to request the CAA pass your details on to City. By the way, as it's part of a research project, the whole 2 hour exam is free and at least you'll get the satisfaction of knowing exactly where you stand in the grand scheme of colour vision things.
I hope this is useful to some of you. Cheers.