A playful approach for early screening of color blindness in Italian primary schools

The term color blindness in humans indicates a condition of hypo-functioning of a class of cones, a specific type of cells in the retina, which leads the subject to confuse colors or perceive some tones in a limited way. Approximately 8% of European men and 1% of European women are affected by color blindness, and in Italy the number of color-blind individuals is around 2.2-2.5 million. Color blindness is a condition related to genetic transmission and is therefore present from birth, but in Italy it is often diagnosed after adolescence. The work described in this paper is part of a larger research project called Game4CED regarding color blindness and board games. This paper tests the possibility of diagnosing color blindness in childhood, in a playful way, using board games, to provide teaching staff, tutors and educators with support and techniques for testing in classrooms. This approach is not intended to replace a medical examination, which is necessary if a potentially color-blind child is identified but aims to propose a preliminary screening avoiding the stress of a medical analysis. The experiment was organized at the "Dante Alighieri" Primary School of the Giovanni XXIII Comprehensive Institute of Arona (NO) and involved a sample of approximately 120 kids under 10 years, from classes from the first to the fourth grade. For the experiment some customized versions of famous board games have been prepared, in which color sensitivity is significant. The games used (SpeedColor, Dobble, Nimble and Fantascatti) have been specifically modified in such a way as to reduce the logical associations between colors and shapes, in order to work as much as possible on visual perception with the less possible cognitive processing. In addition to board games, the subjects who presented greater difficulties have been further screened with the online game qolour (http://qolour.it) to exclude any false positives. The proposed method proved useful for involving the analyzed subjects. The success in identifying some cases attests that the approach used by the study group was effective in the early diagnosis of the disorder.