Hopeful ATC with questions

JanetMcFarlane

New Member
Hello wonderful people of jetcareer forums. My name is Janet McFarlane. I am new to this forum and joined it shortly after receiving a geographic preference e-mail and a well qualified score on the ATSAT.

As a female I have the dubious honor of being in the less than 0.5% of the population who has a color vision "deficiency". Or, at least I think I do.

While contemplating AFROTC 10 years back, with the hope for a pilot slot I visited my AME to get my eyes looked at and to obtain a medical clearance to pursue a private pilots license. This was before I put in my scholarship app. My main concern was I may not have 20/20 vision. To my surprise the Doc informed me I have a color deficiency and put a restriction on my cert of Not valid for night flight or by color control signal. I was shocked as I never had any inkling of a problem. The test was the "Ishihara pseudochromatic test" The doc informed me I should seek outside advice from another test/Doc. I later took the farnsworth lantern and passed. So, I assumed I had only a slight deficiency.

Time has a way of passing quickly and the Air Force pursuit passed with time and other reasons. I never received a letter of evidence for color vision and unfortunately missed the deadline to be grandfathered in over the summer. My only chance to renew my medical was to either take the farnsworth lantern again or some other alternate test. Well, I couldn't located a lantern in my area so I went to the Optometry College nearby with form 8500-7. I took the Dvorine psuedochromatic color vision test and passed! I did get two wrong but I was able to see the other plates pretty easily. Got my medical clearance.

Now, with this great opportunity in ATC that recently arose I looked further into this issue. My question to those who have gone through the process is; What color vision test does the ATC employ? I saw through some searches that it is the Dvorine test. If so, that would be great. Also what is the failure criteria? Would I be ok with only 2 errors?

I have PM'ed a few from my searches off the board but I hope to reach a wider audience by posting. I also hope I posted in the correct area. Ask a flight surgeon seemed to reveal no clear answer.

Wow that is a lot of type. Sorry for the length, just looking for some help.

It's now 1:30am, I just finished wrapping presents and I must sleep! Thank you all very much in advance.

Janet
 
Hi Janet,

I responded to your PM, but for making the sake of making information public i'll post here:
I had nearly the same problem and I'm also wondering if the ATC still accepts the dvorine dot test? From my experience It seems that in medical terms you are an anomalous trichromat, meaning that you have all three color cones working R/G/B, and either your R or G cones is at like 96% when your others are at 100%. Believe it or not you or I will fail the ishihara test... I did but passed the dvorine with no errors.

The intent is to discover those who are strong anomalous trichromats ex. one cone is functioning at 50-70% and dichromats(those missing a color cone). These are the people who will have trouble identifying colors. I guess you can say we are the reasonable accommodation who have no problem identifying colors but only have trouble with the ishihara. Then again it could all be just a fluke ;-) However the letter factory portion of the ATSAT was dependent on color. I wonder if this was by design?

I am pretty sure the ATC is still using the dvorine test. I was told it is a more reliable test than the ishihara and i believe you can get 2 wrong out of the 14 test plates. 1 is a demo plate. Hope this helps

Good topic! lets keep this going
 
Hey there. Thank you for the reply. Are you sure it was the ishihara? Such as did you see the title of the book. The Dvorine test is indecipherable from the ishihara. It is a circle dot test just like the ishihara but a little more reliable. Just wanna make sure you didn't confuse the two. Thank you again for the help

-Janet
 
Hey there. Thank you for the reply. Are you sure it was the ishihara? Such as did you see the title of the book. The Dvorine test is indecipherable from the ishihara. It is a circle dot test just like the ishihara but a little more reliable. Just wanna make sure you didn't confuse the two. Thank you again for the help

-Janet

To be pefectly honest Janet, I'm not sure. I didn't realize that the Ishihara and Dvorine tests were similar, but all I remember were the colored dotted plates with the numbers embedded inside them.
 
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