Like explaining colors to a blind man
A color-blind one, that is.
And one picture is worth 1,000 words:
Here’s the website for the glasses.
Most of the color-blind people in the videos who put on the glasses are overwhelmed. At first they usually pause (it often takes a while for eyes and brain to adjust), and then it hits them how different what they are seeing with the glasses on is from what they usually see without them (which is what they’ve seen for their entire lives until then). And though red, green, and blue are favorite colors, there is no question that for most of them the hands-down flabbergasting topper of all is purple. Usually they’ve seen some attenuated version of red, green, and blue before, but they’ve had no experience of purple, which has previously looked the same to them as blue.
This video’s great. Actually, they’re pretty much all great, and there are a lot of them. Whenever you’re feeling blue (!), just watch one and it’ll cheer you up (sometimes through your tears). As the very last guy in this one says, right at the end, “Why doesn’t everybody have flowers everywhere?”
Some commenters at YouTube think the glasses and the videos are a hoax and that they’re actors. To me, it’s clear they aren’t actors, because if they’re actors then they’re the best actors in the world, as are their families. Plus, if you read the explanation by the people who put the video up, it explains how the glasses work:
EnChroma glasses are an optical assistive device; they are not a cure for color blindness. The underlying cause of most color vision deficiencies is that the red and green-sensitive retinal cone cells have an overlapping response to light. Instead of responding separately to each wavelength of light, their response is highly similar. To compensate for the overlap, the EnChroma lens contains proprietary optical materials that selectively remove particular wavelengths of light exactly where the overlap is occurring.
Some skeptics are also doubtful because many of the people already seem to know the names of colors (although previously they didn’t always affix them to the correct colors as most of us see them). But that’s not odd at all; as one commenter who is colorblind wrote:
I am color blind, and the bigger majority of color blind people can see all colors, just not as vividly. I am red-green color blind and I know what red and green looks like, they just not that powerful. They are hard to distinguish if the saturation is low.
There are indeed people who are completely colorblind to all colors, and the glasses can’t help them. But that’s an extremely rare condition. For the majority of colorblind people, these glasses can help.
A great many of the people not only love the newly-discovered color purple, but they use the same word to describe the colors they now see: “vibrant.” In the comments for one video, someone said, “I watch these like every week to remind myself not to take things for granted and to appreciate purple.”
This is my absolute favorite one of these videos so far. This man is an artist, by the way:
I have seen similar videos for people who were deaf getting their cochlear implants turned on for the first time. The joy they feel is so powerful it makes you cry.
My college roommate’s father was colorblind. They were wealthy and had one of the first color TVs. His father thought it was wonderful and would tell them come and look at the beautiful color but it was green and purple.
The reaction must be a bit like that children with congenital deafness who get cochlear implants.
I didn’t see Yancey’s comment.
So…you put these things on…not only do you see in color, but you are also instantly treated to the same irritating minor scale piano tune? Can they make these glasses without that feature?
My mother-in-law recently had a cochlear implant. She had been mostly deaf for a while. I’m glad you mentioned that the brain takes a while to adapt (or in her case, learn again). When they turned the device on, it has taken months for her to understand what it was she was hearing. Yes, she was able to hear things, but could only distinguish a few of the sounds.
Not meaning to diminish the joy of seeing/hearing again. I just wanted to highlight the time it really does take the brain to learn and process the new information it’s receiving.
Harry:
Yeah, I meant to add that people should tune out the music. It’s somewhat annoying. But in the last one there isn’t any music. Mostly it’s the compilations that have the music.
Yeah, I saw that. I hate that people think you need to have your emotions manipulated just at the moment silence would have worked far better.
I can relate to this. When I was 9 years old I got my first glasses. I was extremely near sighted but it wasn’t caught because I had no problem reading and didn’t realize everyone else could see better. I have a twin, we are identical, so are our eyes, of course. We are 82 and still remember seeing the leaves on trees for the first time. We always knew they were there, we could see them up close, but didn’t realize what others were seeing.
Seven years ago I had the same experiences when I had cataract surgery and could see without glasses.
Life is amazing. I am so happy for these people, I wish everyone who needs these could have them.
I had a friend who was color blind.
He drove by knowing that the top light was red and the bottom green.
Except for a small town in Missouri that thought it was a good idea to reverse that order.
For reference, you can see what colors look like to the colorblind
Some color-blind people have no idea that they are color-blind. I witnessed one such case when my mother, an English teacher, gave a private lesson to a student in our home. She asked him to give her a textbook which was in 3 tomes, each with cover of different color for students of different level of language skills. She asked a green tome, but he gave her a red one. When she took the green one, the student could not see the difference. This was the first time in his life when he noticed his vision deficiency. And he was an adult already.
Reminds me of that movie They Live, where the guy is trying to get the black guy to wear the sunglasses.
Here’s one of a similar such video I saw several months ago:
Three brothers share emotional moment
Clearly, the moment is too much for the one brother. I cannot even begin to imagine what they must be feeling!
I took their test and my color blindness is correctable, according to the results. Neo, you may have just changed my life. Tears streaming down my face. Thank you!
Its a great example of the lack of discernment is the same as blindness!!
the problem is that the diagnosis came before understanding, and that they are not color blind, they lack discernment between two colors, and so, cant distinguish them. two very complete problems, one would exist if the visual cells that respond to red or green are gone, vs the response range overlaps and both are working.
pssst… you can figure out what the glasses are doing..
damping down the off range to balance against the other two
and removing their bell curve tails to create distinction.
after all, the cure for a lack of discernment is distinction…
😉
Artfldgr: I read your comment, and learned something from it. Thanks.
Lurch:
I’m so glad to hear that!! Good luck with the glasses; I hope you have a great experience.
Yancey, that was a very handy clip.
Lurch, I’m glad for you!
When I was a kid we had some pastel colored cereal bowls. There was one bluish-greenish bowl that I called green and others called blue.
According to wiki there is a rare blue-green color-blindness called tritanomaly. I’ve never tested for it. I’ve never run into this disparity with other objects. If I do have this color-blindness, it must be fairly mild.
“Why doesn’t everybody have flowers everywhere?”
The REAL question about flowers is…
“How is it we find the sexual organs of one species attractive, but find our own undesirable?”
😀