You think people like being called ‘deficient’? Why don’t you want to use the preferred term, ‘Color Blindness’? Anyway, wikipedia list Color Vision Deficiency (CVD) as another name for color blindness. It does sound more clinical that way.
If you say it quickly, “anomalous trichromacy” sounds a bit like “anomalous necromancy”. If they don’t know the difference between “necromancy” and “necrophilia”, you could get some pretty unexpected reactions. 
Tetrachromacy is one such condition where people have a 4th type of color receptor allowing them to discern far more colors than most people.
Technically I have deuteranomalous trichromacy. I have also heard it described as “green weak” but really, outside of discussing the matter with a medical person I just say “color blind”. It’s not 100% descriptively correct but it’s the English term and people have some idea of what you’re referring to when you’re using it.
I don’t like color blindness (as a Canadian I would call it colour blindness, eh?) because only in the very rarest of cases are people unable to see any colors so the term is inaccurate. It also throws everyone with the various types of color vision deficiencies into the same bucket.
Maybe I will start using the term color vision variability when talking about how to select a set of colors that will be distinguishable for as many users as possible.
Thanks to everyone for your responses.
You’d think that Adobe Corp could afford to design adaptive websites. Maybe they don’t care because their subscribers probably never use the software on such devices.
When did being referred to as blind become objectionable? Aside from referees.
I work with a lot of clients that must test new employees for color blindness, because the ability to discern colors can be a bona fide occupational requirement in some jobs.
Not a single one uses the medical terms. They just say color blindness. I don’t think there’s a preferred euphemism.
I’m red/green colorblind, and I’ve never met anyone else, colorblind or otherwise, who used any other term in casual conversation.
I would gently suggest that you might be overthinking this—though clearly your intentions are kind. Any other term in a non-medical context would risk confusion, IMHO.
I met one person who sincerely believed that anything red or green was literally invisible to me. That’s literally the worst interaction I’ve ever had about being colorblind.
You get 100 internet points for not adding an extra definite article¹ to “hoi polloi.” I know you’re (rightly) decrying elitism, but I’d argue that doing so while getting the elitist details right makes anti-elitist arguments even stronger. Cheers!
¹ For those who don’t know Greek, “hoi polloi” is Greek for “the people,” so “the hoi polloi” ends up meaning “the the people.” And yes, I believe I am fun at parties; why do you ask?
That’d be a great interaction! If I ever meet someone who sincerely believes that colorblindness involves x-ray vision that can see right through a little red dress or a lime-green pair of panties, I can assure you I’ll sport a classic Clark Kent grin while carefully wording Neither-Confirm-Nor-Deny explanations about having a bona fide superpower…
Respectfully, why not listen to the color-blind people in the thread, who have nearly unanimously said they prefer the term “colo(u)r blind?”
I was initially uncomfortable with the term “little people,” but Peter Dinklage and many other members of that community have made it clear that’s the term they prefer. Isn’t it most respectful to use the term color-blind people prefer, especially when the preference is shared by a large majority of those afflicted?
It was a great interaction, and for exactly the reason you suggest. This was a close, platonic female friend—wearing a green top at the time—and we laughed about it occasionally for years afterward. She’s quite bright…she just wasn’t thinking in that moment.
I believe I am tetrachromatic. From the wikipedia link:
but the most prevalent and pronounced tetrachromacy would derive from female carriers of major red/green pigment anomalies, usually classed as forms of “color blindness” (protanomaly or deuteranomaly).
I have always had very good color vision, and cared more about color than most people. My mother says that after learning some basic words like mama and dada, words 10-20 were all names of colors. Also, my brother (and grandfather) has red-green color blindness, of the form discussed. He can distinguish most shades of red and green, just not very well. So a pigment that’s sensitive to the “wrong” frequencies is probably the source of his color-blindness. I’m currently fighting with an electrician to get him to install lights with a high CRI because it matters to me. And he doesn’t even know what I’m talking about. Sigh.
Interesting that tetrachromacy derives from forms of color blindness. Interesting that tetrachromacy is lumped together with forms of color blindness since in your case it could be considered the opposite of ‘normal’ color perception. In my case anomalous tetrachromacy means I just can’t see blue as well as everyone else. Any mix of blue and green will appear to be clearly green to me. This is likely just something different about the frequencies my blue and green cones can distinguish, although I don’t know if there’s anyway to identify the specific cause other than a genetic sequence being known for the condition or to dissect one of my eyes, something I’m not eager to do right now. A lot of research in this area is rather recent. The odd thing is that my father maybe couldn’t see green at all. I have no way to find out about that because there’s no one alive now to ask about any details. Most forms of color blindness are passed along from your mother’s genes, but the cause of anomalous forms are not all clear. I did meet one person with blue-yellow color blindness, my brother was married to her for a short time. For their wedding she chose the colors yellow and gray. Yellow is the outstanding color mix of green and red that will stand out when blue colors are detected at a very low level, much less sensitivity to blue than I have.
It’s not like people care much about this. Many people are familiar with red-green colorblindness, the most common form, but otherwise they usually don’t understand much about color vision and the generic term ‘color blindness’ works better than trying to explain the different conditions.
“True” color blindness means that you are “missing” a cone type, typically because you got an X chromosome with a gene that doesn’t produce that cone. This can be the L (“red”) or M (“green”) cone which is replaced in the retinal matrix by the other type, and leads to that particular type of color blindness where a range of colors perceived by others as reds, greens, and yellows appear similar. Whether you are missing the L or M, the percept is similar but not identical, so a test to determine which type you have is a battery of different tests instead of just one.
Females typically don’t get this because the “healthy” X chromosome from the other parent suppresses the loss of perception, but women can be color blind if they get a gene from a color blind father and a color blind or carrier mother.
There is also S cone (“blue”) dysfunction, which is instead coded on the 7th chromosome and therefore is not sex-selective and also pretty rare. This gene arose at a separate event in evolutionary history, whereas the L or M cone is probably a mutation of the other type. There are also other conditions like complete color blindness (shades of grey) from cortical brain damage but the retina is fine.
Anomalous trichromacy is not quite the same cause. It’s not that you have a “defective” gene so much that you have two different cone genes that have sensitivities with a larger than typical overlap. You might see that literature uses a single number to characterize the peak sensitivities of the cones, but in reality there are many alleles of the cone sensitivities so L can normally range from 564–580 nm and M from 534–545 nm. If you happen to get 3 alleles that are closer together, then you might have a 19 nm difference rather than 30 nm, which in some situations can lead to suboptimal color vision, but in most cases the visual system can compensate for this. People with anomalous trichromacy might have some inkling that they don’t see colors like most other people do, but it doesn’t usually provide a detriment.
My anomalous trichromacy only showed up when I was given an Ishihara test, which is actually pretty sensitive. It will show up “defects” that, outside an Ishihara test and a very few other circumstances, will never be evident.
Sure, but for the noun specifying the condition (which is what the thread title is asking about), the aforementioned “color vision deficiency” is also very widely used, e.g., by the American Optometric Association and the National Institutes of Health. It seems to be slightly preferred by researchers and doctors because it doesn’t suggest that people with the condition can’t see color at all.
“Blindness” is still a technical medical term partly, AFAICT, because it’s used to indicate certain specific thresholds of visual impairment. If your vision falls short of those quantitative thresholds, you are classified as “blind”. But AFAIK “color blindness” isn’t used to refer to a similarly specific threshold of color vision deficiency.
I did have disagreements over the color of some things through my life, but I didn’t think much about it, just a matter of opinion where the line between green and blue is, right? Until I saw a Ishihara test card checking for blue sensitivity and I couldn’t read the number. It was several years later before an ophthalmologist went through a complete set of test cards confirming that I could not identify certain blue frequencies well.
That’s true, but so what? That doesn’t preclude its use in non-technical contexts; surely you’re not blind to that.
I’m not questioning whether another term like “color vision deficiency” is technically correct. The OP asked if there was a “less fraught” term for color blindness. I take “less fraught” to mean “more acceptable to the people who have it.”
And the answer to that question is no; as a group, a large majority of us prefer the term “color blindness.” So why not go with that?
To return to my previous analogy, achondroplasia is a common, medically correct noun specifying the condition that affects Peter Dinklage and many others. Still, outside of medical contexts and as far as I know, Dinklage still prefers the term “little person,” not “achondroplasiac” or “person with achondroplasia,” no matter how medically accurate those terms might be.
The OP asked for advice, and lots of us colorblind people answered the same way. The OP can accept our answer or ignore it. I gather the OP has elected the latter course and chosen to invent their own term, which is absolutely their prerogative.
I’m asking conversationally, “OK; that’s fine, but if the goal is sensitivity, why not respect the wishes of the people whose opinion you sought?”
(I say “conversationally” because this isn’t a set-up or a trick; there’s no “gotcha” response coming, whether I agree with the OP’s answer or not. It’s simply a sincere question).
[Edits: clarity, word choice]
I know, but my (clumsily expressed) point was that your (very reasonable) advocacy for the adjective “colorblind” is slightly tangential to the OP’s specific query about the noun “color blindness”.
“Colorblind” is the preferred adjective partly, AFAICT, because there aren’t any reasonable synonyms in common use: people don’t describe themselves as “color-vision-deficient”. But “color vision deficiency” as a noun phrase is much more generally used, so I don’t think your saying “well, colorblind people are fine with being called colorblind” fully addresses the OP’s question.