How the test works
Plates made for each test
These are not the printed Ishihara plates. Each plate is drawn from scratch with random dot sizes and a random number, in the same style of dots that eye doctors use.
One color signal at a time
The eye has three kinds of cone cells, sensitive to long, medium and short wavelengths. In each plate, the number differs from the background for only one kind of cone. People who lack or have weak cones of that kind find the number hard or impossible to see.
Clear to faint
Each kind has plates from clear to faint, and the dots vary in brightness so the number cannot be found by lightness alone. Missing two or more plates of one kind is reported as a sign of a deficiency.