Colour (color) blindness (color vision deficiency, or CVD) affects approximately 1 in 12 men (8%) and 1 in 200 women in the world. In Britain, this means that there are approximately 2.7 million color-blind people (about 4.5% of the entire population), most of whom are male.
There are different causes of color blindness. For the vast majority of people with deficient color vision, the condition is genetic and has been inherited from their mother, although some people become color blind as a result of other diseases such as diabetes and multiple sclerosis or they acquire the condition over time due to the aging process, medication, etc.