colour blindness: translation
The term colour blindness was introduced in or shortly before 1844 by the Scottish physicist and homo universalis David Brewster (1781-1868) as an alternative for the expression * Daltonism. Brewster's proposal for this new name was inspired by his observation that there are actually more colour defects than those described by John Dalton (1706-1844) in his 1794 article on the subject. The term colour blindness refers to the inability or diminished ability to distinguish between two or more colours. Although this group of visual deficiencies is traditionally referred to as colour blindness, true colour blindness (i.e. * achromatopsia) is extremely rare. What is generally meant by the term colour blindness is a * colour vision deficiency. As a consequence, the term colour vision deficiency is the preferred term to denote any of these conditions.
References
Brewster, D. (1826). On the invisibility of certain colours to certain eyes. Edinburgh Journal of Science, 4, 85-87.
McIntyre, D. (2002). Colour blindness. Causes and effects. Chester: Dalton Publishing.