Tuesday 19 September 2017

Enchroma glasses: what it feels like to discover you're not in Kansas any more...

Enchroma glasses don't work for everyone who is colour-blind, but the profusion of YouTube videos showing people...

...reacting to putting them on for the first time suggests they can make a real difference. There's also some evidence that, over time, they can rewire the wearer's brain so that they can see colours better even when they're not wearing them. 

I'm red-green colour-blind, albeit to a very minor degree. The only reason I know this is because, on the few occasions when I've taken those tests where you're supposed to "see" numbers in a mass of coloured dots, I either see the wrong number or don't see any number at all. And yet I have absolutely no problem differentiating green and red in everyday life, and I think I see both colours vividly enough. I do get a bit confused when it comes to purple, maroon and magenta, but so what? I have no particular desire to be an airline pilot or to work in a paint factory - i.e. jobs where even minor colour-blindness is a deal-breaker. Still, if I ever happen across a pair of Enchroma specs, I'm going to ask to try them out, because one never knows...

Meanwhile, for many people with severe colour-blindness, Enchroma glasses do appear to be little short of miraculous:


No comments:

Post a Comment