Waggoner Color Vision Test

The three Waggoner tests, side by side

What the CCVT’s five sections do

An applicant passes on General plus Tritan, or on the Protan, Deutan and Tritan scores together. The other two approved computer tests, and what happens when none of them is passed, are covered on the FAA color vision test page.

Which Waggoner color vision test do you mean?

"Waggoner" is a designer's name, not a single test, which is why searching it returns several different things. Terrace Waggoner is an optometrist who has designed color vision tests in both printed and software form through Waggoner Diagnostics. If someone has told you that you need to take "the Waggoner test", the version you sit depends entirely on the setting: an aviation or occupational medical means the WCCVT software, a pediatric or school screening almost certainly means the CVTME plates, and a general clinic may reach for the PIP24 booklet.

The three are not interchangeable. CVTME screens for red-green deficiency in children who cannot yet read numbers, and gives a screening answer only. The WCCVT screens and then quantifies, separating protan from deutan and grading the degree, which is what makes it usable for certification decisions. That difference — screen versus quantify — is the one to keep straight when reading anything about "Waggoner" results.

How does the Waggoner CCVT work?

The WCCVT is pseudo-isochromatic plate testing delivered as software: colored symbol targets that a person with normal color vision reads easily and a person with a red-green deficiency does not. Running on a computer rather than paper buys three things that printed plates cannot offer — the presentation order is not the fixed published sequence people can memorize, the software scores the responses itself, and it can branch. If an applicant does not pass Section 1, the FAA's instrument list notes that Sections 3 and 4 are administered automatically to quantify which deficiency is present and how strong it is.

Section 5 is a digital D-15, the cap-arrangement test that reveals the confusion axis. It is part of the software but explicitly not used for FAA purposes, so an aviation applicant's certification rests on Sections 1, 3 and 4 plus the tritan sub-test. If you want to see how the arrangement task itself behaves, our Farnsworth D-15 runs the same idea in the browser and plots the axis it produces.

How accurate is the Waggoner CCVT?

It has been independently evaluated, which is more than can be said for most color vision software. Ng and colleagues tested 420 people — 59 with a color vision deficiency and 361 without — on the WCCVT, an anomaloscope, the Richmond HRR 4th edition, and Ishihara, and published the results in Optometry and Vision Science in 2015. Screening performance was good: 95% sensitivity and 100% specificity. On classification, the CCVT agreed with anomaloscopy about whether a person was protan or deutan 89% of the time. The authors' overall conclusion was that it is "an adequate color vision screening test" that "appears to provide a fairly accurate diagnosis of deficiency type".

Two caveats from the same study are worth carrying with you. First, the CCVT generally classified people as having a more severe defect than the other tests did — so a Waggoner result that reads worse than a previous Ishihara or HRR result is a known characteristic of the instrument, not necessarily a change in your vision. Second, the study ran 24 of the deficient subjects twice: once on a monitor at its default settings and once standardized to a 6500 K color temperature. Eighteen produced the same result either way, but six agreed better with the other tests once the monitor was set — direct evidence of how much display calibration can move a color vision result.

Is the Waggoner test the same as the HRR?

No, and the two get conflated because both appear on the FAA's list for air traffic control specialists. The Richmond HRR 4th edition is a separate printed plate test: the original Hardy-Rand-Rittler plates, with the colors re-engineered by James Bailey together with Jay and Maureen Neitz and published by Richmond Products in 2002. It was one of the comparison tests used in the study that evaluated the WCCVT, not a Waggoner product.

They also fail differently in the FAA's rules. The Richmond HRR is graded on errors — any error on plates 5 to 10 is a fail — while the WCCVT is graded on section scores. If you are trying to work out which test you actually took, the giveaway is format: HRR is a printed book of plates with symbols in the corners, CVTME is a thinner set of symbol plates aimed at children, and the WCCVT runs on a screen.

CVTME: the children's version

Color Vision Testing Made Easy is the Waggoner test most people meet first, usually at a pediatric or school vision screening. It replaces the numbers of a classic Ishihara plate with circles, stars and squares, so a child only has to point at a shape — no reading, no number recognition, no language. The set is one demonstration plate plus nine test plates, and it is designed to be usable from around age three.

That design choice is what makes it work for the age group where color vision deficiency is most useful to catch: early enough that a school can adapt color-coded materials before a child is labeled inattentive. Our own children's screening follows the same symbol-based approach, which you can run for free at home before deciding whether a formal screening is worth booking.

Can you take the Waggoner color vision test online or for free?

The WCCVT is commercial software rather than a web page: Waggoner Diagnostics sells the Windows version, and the app exists on the App Store and on Android. So unlike the CAD test, it is something an individual can obtain. What you cannot do is use your own run of it for certification. The FAA requires that testing be performed in person and states plainly that "virtual testing, downloaded, or printed versions of color vision tests are prohibited" — the result has to come from an Aviation Medical Examiner administering the test, not from you at home.

There is also the calibration problem the evaluation study measured directly: six of 24 deficient subjects got a result that matched the other tests better once the monitor was standardized to 6500 K. On an uncalibrated screen — yours, ours, anyone's — the colors a color vision test depends on are not exactly the colors the test intends. That is the honest reason to treat any at-home color result, including ours, as a screening estimate rather than a grade.

Waggoner color vision test — frequently asked questions

Is there a free Waggoner color vision test online?

Not an official one. The Waggoner CCVT is commercial software sold for Windows and published as an app for iOS and Android, so it is not a free web test — and a run you administer to yourself does not count for certification, because the FAA requires color vision testing to be performed in person and prohibits virtual, downloaded and printed versions. A free online screening can tell you whether a deficiency is likely and estimate its type, which is a different and more modest claim.

What score do you need to pass the Waggoner CCVT for the FAA?

Either General 21 or higher out of 25 together with Tritan 10 or higher out of 12; or, alternatively, Protan 20 or higher out of 32 and Deutan 20 or higher out of 32, together with Tritan 10 or higher out of 12. The same criteria apply to pilots and to air traffic control specialists, and Sections 3 and 4 are given automatically if Section 1 is not passed.

How accurate is the Waggoner Computerized Color Vision Test?

In an independent study of 420 people published in Optometry and Vision Science in 2015, the CCVT screened with 95% sensitivity and 100% specificity, and matched anomaloscopy on protan-versus-deutan classification 89% of the time. The authors noted it generally graded deficiencies as more severe than the comparison tests, and that results shifted for a quarter of the re-tested subjects when the monitor was standardized to 6500 K.

What is CVTME?

Color Vision Testing Made Easy, a printed plate test designed by Terrace Waggoner for screening children from about age three. It uses circle, star and square symbols instead of numbers — one demonstration plate and nine test plates — so a child can respond by pointing without needing to read. It screens for red-green deficiency; it does not grade severity.

Is the Waggoner test the same as the HRR test?

No. The Richmond HRR 4th edition is a separate printed plate test whose colors were re-engineered by James Bailey with Jay and Maureen Neitz and published by Richmond Products in 2002; it was one of the comparison tests in the study that evaluated the Waggoner CCVT. Both appear on the FAA's acceptable-test list for air traffic control specialists, which is why the two names often get mixed up.

Is the Waggoner CCVT better than Ishihara?

It does more. Ishihara is a fixed printed series screening for red-green deficiency; the CCVT screens, then separates protan from deutan and grades the degree, and adds a tritan sub-test that Ishihara plates do not cover. In the 2015 evaluation both were compared against an anomaloscope, and the CCVT's classification agreed with it 89% of the time. Being software also means the plate order is not the memorizable published sequence.