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Glasses that correct color-blindness
I have a tendency to be kind of cynical in my old age. I see an ad for a product and I immediately doubt the claims unless it’s accompanied by some pretty strong documentation.
Imagine my doubt when I started seeing ads for glasses that helped color blind people to see color. The “scam alert” alarms went off like usual and even though they seemed like they could have potential, the $350 price tag just struck me as egregious for a pair of sunglasses. I mean, how much of a difference could they really make?
Then I found this video on YouTube.
This guy gets a pair for his birthday and his reaction is priceless.
His reaction is the only advertising Enchroma, the manufacturer, will ever need. His happiness and joy at the newfound world of color did more to sell me on their product than any amount of technical analysis or marketing ever could. I don’t have any color blindness but several of my close friends do and it would make my day to give them a gift like that.
Oddly enough, this video reminded me of when I was a broke college student and my friend who was in Optometry school decided she would fit me into contact lenses for the first time. I came from a very working class background and I was the first in the family to ever attend college so money was notoriously tight. I had worn glasses since about 6th grade and was lucky to get a new pair every 4 or 5 years. Contacts were simply out of the question. Besides, I had no idea why I’d ever want to stick plastic in my eye when my glasses worked well enough.
I can remember it so well now.
She did all the exam and then the measurements for my eyeballs; she went and found lenses that should work and then she put them in my eyes.
It felt so weird. Almost uncomfortable to have that soft plastic floating around. I blinked a lot and squinted because it felt so odd, but it was also slightly confusing and so exciting.
Things in the exam room just looked different. Things were sharper, more defined, clear. Not just because the prescription was better than my old glasses but things looked more detailed. We went outside and wandered around campus and I was like a little kid discovering a magical forest for the first time. Trees looked so beautiful. The grass was incredibly sharp and yet soft looking; plush. The bark on trees was astounding. Flowers… wow. I think that might have been the day that I fell in love with flowers. They were these gorgeous, incredible little packets of life and color and shape! The world took on a completely different look from the flat plane I had been accustomed to and it was an amazing change.
I haven’t thought of that day for a long time until I saw this video. He summed up my experience with contacts in one little statement: “The trees don’t even look real… seriously, they seem 3D.”
Yeah, they do look 3D. That’s the way the world is supposed to look. Isn’t it fantastic?
