It might be expected that normal trichromatic females would perform as well as normal trichromatic males of the same age when tested with standard clinical color-vision tests that use pseudoisochromatic vanishing designs on neutral gray backgrounds such as the Hardy-Rand-Rittler (HRR) pseudoisochromatic plates and the Neitz Test of Color Vision (NTCV). Here 2966 children aged 6–13 years from four municipalities in Norway were tested in their school classrooms with the NTCV. Children who made errors on the test were retested. 187 males and 152 females made one or more errors on retest, and each was tested individually on the Richmond HRR Fourth Edition. 8% of the males were defined as color deficient when a double criterion for failing was applied, that is, one or more errors on the NTCV and two or more errors on the HRR. The calculated frequency of color-deficient females (homozygotes) for the same criterion is 0.42%. By contrast, 3% of females failed the criterion that gave a stable population of color-deficient males. This result is considered in relation to reports of female carriers of color-vision deficiency having problems with the Ishihara test and of females having poorer color discrimination than males.

At the Göttingen meeting of the International Colour Vision Society, I reported on a comparison of the second edition of the American Optical Hardy-Rand-Rittler Pseudoisochromatic plates (AO HRR) with the Richmond Products third edition of the same test and concluded that the chromaticities were exceptionally poorly matched and that the new edition was a “pale imitation of the real thing” (unpublished). This conclusion led to our abandoning a clinical trial. In 2002, Richmond Products has published a fourth edition and, in 2003, Waggoner has published a modified HRR with additional (Ishihara style) plates and the tetartan confusion figures removed. As a precursor to any clinical trial, the colors used in the plates have been measured and comparisons drawn between the four editions. While the two most recent editions much more closely resemble the original AO HRR and the chromaticities are much better aligned on the dichromatic confusion lines, the excitation purities (and therefore the degree of difficulty) of the plates are less well matched in the Richmond Products editions. In addition, there is a significant degree of metamerism in the third edition and Waggoner edition that makes variations in illuminant more critical to performance.