Glasses provide cure for colour blindness

[Saru]

Scientists have developed special spectacles that allow someone to see in the full spectrum of light.

The high tech glasses help those with "red-green deficiency", an inability to see some red and green colours. The genetic abnormality is estimated to affect about 10 per cent of all adult men and a small number of women.

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[ExpandMyMind]

This is amazing.

[+and-then]

Now if they'd just devise a cure for "beer goggles"

[rashore]

Heh, the cure for beer goggles is not to put them on in the first place

I think this is pretty neat, though I don't know how I would feel about an improvement of red/green at the cost of losing some blue/yellow.

[pallidin]

My brother has "color blindness" I do not.

I guess I can't imagine what he's missing, in the sense that I can't really show him.

[ChrLzs]

Fascinating! I want to try these - at that price they are worth investigating. I have mild red-green color blindness (deuteranopia) and yes, it's hard to describe to someone without it, just as those with 'full' color vision couldn't describe how much better or different their worldview is. But I'll try..

First up all bright blues, oranges and yellows are just as beautiful, colourful, dazzling and easily recognisable to me as they are to you non-CBers. Interestingly, so are vivid greens and reds, especially when they are well lit or are themselves light sources. That's why I, and the vast majority of R-G colorblind folks, have absolutely no difficulty with traffic lights. But we are not as sensitive to red light as you guys, so that means:

- dark reds are not vivid to us, and may be mistaken for dark browns or even dark greens

- dark blues may be mistaken for dark purples, again because we are not very sensitive to the added red..

- pale pastel tones with varying amounts of red may not be obvious to us - we might mistake a very pale grey for a very pale pink or a very pale blue for a pale purple, or v-v.

Hope that helps you normal folk understand us deuteranopes! Please note - I would prefer you do not abbreviate that term...

BTW, ironically I am a mad keen photographer that dislikes black and white - I almost always shoot colour! That used to cause me a few issues in the days of film and back before computers came along - I might not spot a flesh tone that was slightly off-colour in a final print so I always had to get an assistant to help check. But now with a computer to assist me, I can check the RGB or CMYK numbers - no more problems!

[highdesert50]

I am always amazed at the serendipitous results of experiments intended for one purpose that have sometimes better results when applied to different purposes ... Penicillin, for example.

[Zero Fox FK]

Would be interesting if they started seeing things we couldn't, like ghosts or something.

I really want ghost glasses...

[sarah_444]

Would be interesting if they started seeing things we couldn't, like ghosts or something.

I really want ghost glasses...

Have you seen "Thirteen Ghosts"? lol

[JesseCuster]

Interesting, red-green color blindness runs in my family. Me and my 2 brothers are red-green color blind.

But I can't really see the appeal of these glasses. In my case, it's not like I'm going to get run over crossing the road because I can't tell the green man from the red man at the crosswalk. It's quite subtle. Can't do them damn color blindness test for hell though. There's a number somewhere in that blob of coloured circles? Yeah, whatever!

I have a brother however who has it worse. He's an arty type and I remember as a kid him drawing pictures with light green instead of pink pigs, a Christmas tree that was brown instead of green, etc. And he's a graphic designer! Quite good at what he does apart from when he gets the hue completely wrong on things like a poster he designed where all the people had a sickly green shade to their skin he didn't see himself. He thought they were a healthy pink flesh colour. Maybe he'd appreciate this.

dark blues may be mistaken for dark purples, again because we are not very sensitive to the added red..

Never had that issue but my other brother as a kid used to always hand me blue and purple markers when he was drawing and get me to tell him which was which.

Edited February 12, 2013 by Archimedes

[ChrLzs]

Interesting, red-green color blindness runs in my family. Me and my 2 brothers are red-green color blind.

...Never had that issue but my other brother as a kid used to always hand me blue and purple markers when he was drawing and get me to tell him which was which.

That's fascinating - it sounds as though like me, you would also be classed as a deuteranope, but the effects are significantly different - there is obviously a wide range of differing sensitivities in differing color bands.. Like you, I don't encounter many problems with it either.. but I read some comments from CB people who had tried these glasses and were quite impressed - so now I just want to see what they do..

I guess I have visions (geddit?) of it being an epiphany, like the first time you put on a good pair of Polaroids (preferably the slightly amber coloured ones, on a very bright, sunny and glary day by the seaside) and you see what they can do... Oooo-ooh!

Something tells me I'll be disappointed, but I'm still curious.

[Der]

Interesting, red-green color blindness runs in my family. Me and my 2 brothers are red-green color blind.

But I can't really see the appeal of these glasses.

Probably because you don't realize what you're missing.