Is your meat rare or well-done? Do your clothes match, or do they clash?

People who are color blind tend to have a harder time answering questions like those.

OK, a rarer-than-wanted steak or a fashion faux pas is not a huge problem. But color blindness can create significant hazards. For instance, a color-blind person may not know whether a horizontal traffic light is red or green…or may not realize that he has inadvertently been given who-knows-what type of blue pills instead of the usual pink ones he needs.

Though some people are color blind from birth due to a genetic glitch, others develop the condition later in life as a result of a head injury…an eye condition such as retinal detachment, diabetic retinopathy or optic neuropathy…or a side effect of the arthritis medication chloroquine.

If you or someone you care about is or becomes color blind, you’ll want to know about several new, cutting-edge technologies that are helping color-blind people see better than ever…

VIEWING THE WORLD DIFFERENTLY

Color-vision deficiency (as color blindness is officially known) affects roughly 8% of men and 0.5% of women in the US. The condition can be mild, moderate or severe.

The most common type by far is red-green color blindness. People with this type have trouble telling the difference between those two particular colors—both hues look more or less like gray. Also, colors that have red or green in them appear to be missing that color…so purple looks blue and olive looks brown. A more rare type is blue-yellow color blindness, which typically develops in adulthood.

Free test: Surprisingly, not everyone who is or becomes color blind recognizes that fact. Test yourself: Click here for a free online color-vision test. Didn’t pass? It’s time to see an ophthalmologist for a professional evaluation and complete color blindness test.

FOR A BRIGHTER TOMORROW

Many color-blind people can benefit from these new technologies…

Must-have phone app. Shopping for, say, fruits can be difficult when you can’t tell what color they are. For example, maybe you love red apples and hate green apples—but you have a hard time distinguishing one from the other just by looking. The DanKam app offers a simple solution. When you open the app, you can look at an object (such as an apple) through your smartphone’s camera. The DanKam instantly converts colors—in this case, reds and greens—into filtered versions that make it easy to distinguish one hue from the other. You can adjust the app according to which colors you have trouble seeing. Download it for $3 on your iPhone or Android phone.

Secret video game modes. Many video games that are fun for both kids and adults now allow you change that tough-to-see green to a recognizable blue, for example, or morph colors into shapes. Go to the “options,” “menu” or “user interface” area in the game and choose “color blind mode.” Games with this option include Peggle, Chuzzle and Zuma Blitz (www.PopCap.com)…Battlefield 3 (www.Battlefield.com)…World of Warcraft series (http://US.Battle.net/wow/en)…and others. Most of these games can be played on a variety of phones, computers, tablets and video game systems—so check Web sites for details.

A FUTURE CURE?

Here’s one experimental but promising treatment for color blindness. Dr. Neitz has had success over the past few years curing—yes, curing—red-green color blindness in squirrel monkeys. The therapy involves taking a gene that the monkeys are missing and inserting it into their retinas. Check out this inspiring (and adorable) video of one of the monkeys, Dalton, as he aces a test that measures his ability to recognize the color red—a color he couldn’t distinguish at all before Dr. Neitz treated him.

Dr. Neitz and his colleagues are now trying to create a similar type of therapy for humans that is equally safe and effective. Stay tuned!