Fully colorblind boy sees colors for the first time with special glasses

In My Humble Opinion
21

I wouldn’t describe it a very severe, it’s just the kind I happen to have. Like you, I feel I can distinguish most colours reasonably well, and I’ve managed to earn a living as a graphic designer for 25 years, so I’m probably doing all right, mostly.

Except that those are all real problems that I have — so how well am really doing?

For what it’s worth, EnChroma have a self-test feature on their website that I tried out a while ago, and it seems their lenses probably wouldn’t help my particular malfunction. Not that I have $300 to spare just now, either.

22

I first saw The Wizard of Oz on TV many times as a kid before we had color TV.

The yellowness of the brick road was immaterial before and after I finally saw it (again, as a kid) in color.

The experience was revelatory. And that’s just art holding a mirror.

23

I’m Aspergers, and I’ve lived with it for nearly 80 years, and I’m fine with it. Just like everyone else (then), I was thrown into society to sink or swim, and learned to live with the things that are more challenging to me than to most other people. I wouldn’t want to be neurotypical, although there are times when Aspie is a drawback.

But in the future there will be nobody like me, because nowadays, kids with Aspergers are being identified and drugged to the brink of true insanity. If not aborted in utero.

Anti-autism drugs are being forced on them. Our handlers have a way of forcing things on people.

24

I’m glad to hear you’ve not let your disability prevent you from doing things.

But for just about any disability, you can find examples where the person overcame them. Beethoven went deaf, after all. Finding a few counterexamples doesn’t mean that the disability doesn’t cause problems on average. And for all we know, John Bryne or whoever would have been even better without the disability.

This may well be true. But you can’t ignore it, can you? If kids are discouraged from art or anything else by their parents or teachers, then they may never have the opportunity to explore their natural talents and interests.

This is a social problem. Social problems are hard, and virtually unfixable except through decades of immense societal pressure.

$300 glasses are easy. And while these are not perfect, they seem to be good enough in a lot of cases. Kids wearing them won’t have to work harder to overcome any “you can’t do that, you’re colorblind” pressure. In fact the mere existence of these glasses is a benefit in this regard–even if a particular kid doesn’t use them, they know that they could, if it ever proved necessary.

25

Moderator Action

I think the factual aspects of this have been answered about as well as they are going to be in this thread. Since the topic has veered well into IMHO territory already, let’s move it there.

Moving thread from General Questions to In My Humble Opinion.

26

If you’re making the modest proposal that helping color blind people will eventually lead to aborting kids with Asperger’s, I’m out.

Have fun, y’all. :cool:

27

I’m so ashamed of myself…

I read the thread title and the very first thing that popped into my head was…

… and he was immediately teased mercilessly by his peers.

:smack:

I must be a Special Kind of Asshole.

28

How is it a disability? It wasn’t even noticed by anyone until I took a particular vision test in my mid-30’s. If I had never had that vision test no one would have ever known I was colorblind. How can you argue that a “disability” that went unnoticed for so long, and even when noticed, did not get in the way of what I wanted to do?

Like I said, it’s like arguing that being left-handed is a disability. Only if society makes it so. Otherwise, it’s just a difference.

There aren’t just a few examples of colorblindness not being a problem, there are a LOT of them. In fact, the FAA was writing so many exemptions for colorblind pilots for who their colorblindness wasn’t a problem they changed the testing process because most of those colorblindness diagnoses they were doing are now considered false positives - from a safety standpoint that’s what they are. It’s not and never was a problem as far a real-world functioning was concerned.

Better how?

Again, this “disability” wasn’t noticed or diagnosed until well into his professional life. Not to mention all the thousands of artists who have been found to have the same “disability”.

For well over 30 years I was discouraged from pursuing flight, but I got my pilot’s license anyway. So yes, I can ignore it. And I did.

So? Let’s start exerting that pressure so we can get the changes made.

These glasses do NOT cure colorblindness!

They can’t make you see a color your retina is incapable of perceiving.

They will not enable you to pass a vision test for occupations where color perception is deemed necessary.

I don’t know what you mean by “good enough” here. They don’t magically allow you to see color. They allow you to distinguish color by eliminating certain wavelengths… which also means you would see fewer hues in total. That could actually be a very bad thing for an artist, especially one working with color.

Do these glasses have some use? Yes, I’m they do. For someone with, say, problems distinguishing red and green traffic lights they might make that task easier and thus driving safer. That does not mean we should mandate ALL colorblind drivers wear them. For one thing, they don’t help everyone. For another, most people with aberrant color vision (such as myself) don’t have a problem distinguishing traffic lights in the first place so such glasses would be redundant and an unnecessary expense.

29

It is a disability. I had to work harder to use right-handed scissors, or cut my hands digging in the box for those couple of left-handed ones. I smear pencil on the page or give myself hand cramps.

It’s a minor disability, sure, but it’s still something that makes life harder for me than 90% of the population.

Let’s be concrete here. The most common form of colorblindness is deuteranomaly, which is a form of anomalous trichromacy. Men in particular are prone to this.

Note the “tri” in that second term. Anomalous trichromats still have three distinct color receptors, just like people with normal vision. However, the sensitivity curves are shifted such that they have a harder time distinguishing greens from reds.

Take a look at this chart. In particular, note the overlap between the green and red curves (this is not quite accurate terminology–they should be labeled M and L for medium and long wavelengths, but it doesn’t matter here).

You can see that even in normal vision, there is huge overlap between the green and red curves. Only when you get to the very ends of the spectrum–closer to the 500 or 650 nm wavelengths–is there a significant difference at all. The brain does the necessary adjustment to account for this.

For deuteranomaly/anomalous trichromacy, there is still a difference between the red and green curves. However, the differences are smaller, even when you get to the ends of the spectrum. These people have a lot of trouble differentiating colors in the overlap portion, but generally can distinguish very pure colors.

The glasses filter out the troublesome overlapping portion, leaving the parts where there is the greatest difference between the two curves. It is not perfect–people with normal vision have greater overlap for all parts of the spectrum. But it absolutely makes colors purer and gives greater distinguishability.

This is not just faking things either–remember, people with this kind of colorblindness still have three distinct cone types (in contrast to tritanopes or dichromacy). It just adjusts the sensitivity curves to be a bit more like normal vision. Not perfect, but better.

30

Yes, I am quite familiar with deuteranomaly both on an intellectual and personal level.

Yes, I understand how the glasses make the colors “purer”.

The problem with the notion that these are going to enable a deuteranomalous person to because a better artist is that, in some color work, those subtle differences in the (to the deuteranomalous) problem zone are important. The cost of making the perceived colors “purer” is to eliminate those subtle in-between shades. If anything, that’s going to make doing color work harder.

In reality, what us deuteranomalous artists do when dealing with the “problem zone”, at least in the comic illustration world (which I was briefly part of) is to very carefully mix colors to a formula for critical areas like the Big Hero’s uniform. Even people with normal color vision do this, because it’s easier than trying to color match all the time.

Pantone numbers also do a lot to get around this problem.

As I said, the EnChroma glasses have a niche but they don’t “cure” colorblindness any more than a left-handed scissors makes you right-handed.

The problem with labeling something as a “disability” is that it becomes a negative used against the person, whereas if you call it a “variation” it is less damning. Yes, it’s a subtle distinction but in society it can be important. Being left-handed is inconvenient, but it’s not disabling the same way having only one arm, or your right arm being paralyzed, would be disabling. Have deuteranomalous trichromacy is invconvenient, it’s not disabling the way being a deuteranope is disabling. The biggest annoyance is that society treats deuteranomaly the same as deuteranopia when they have significantly different impacts on the person in question.

31

By that reasoning, would you say that right-handedness is a minor disability that makes life a little harder for people who aren’t ambidextrous?

32

Not exactly. It’s more about whether you’re in the 90% or the 10%. If you’re in the 90%, then all the elements of civilization are built for you. There’s no left-handed equipment that doesn’t exist in right-handed form; the converse is not true. Cars are built for you if you aren’t too tall or too short. Font sizes are chosen based on normal eyesight. Most things are built for people with four working limbs. And so on.

If there were some weird isolated civilization where everybody was ambidextrous, and had some writing system that somehow required using both hands at once, then being solely right-handed would be a disability.

Having “superpowers” like ambidextrousness or having four color receptors (it happens) may make it slightly easier in some situations, but being within normal variation means everything fits by default. There’s no tool that requires being ambidextrous or artwork that requires super-color vision.

33

Here’s another video that shows a pair of colorblind brothers. The family bought the EnChroma glasses for one (!), but both teenagers immediate response was tears. Nobody’s saying colorblind people HAVE to buy them, but it’s obviously a profound impact on some.

StG

34

Ok, but when you say things like “They can’t make you see a color your retina is incapable of perceiving” it sounds like you don’t know how it works physically. It’s true of course, but ignores the fact that dichromacy or achromatopsia is uncommon.

That’s not exactly what’s going on.

We have to distinguish between color and frequency. Although a single frequency corresponds to a single color (for normal human vision), a given color does not correspond to a single frequency–most colors have a spectrum associated with them. In fact any pigment must have a spectrum, because the amount of light available at any given wavelength is essentially zero. A pigment must span a band of wavelengths in order to be seen (light sources are a different story, and can be almost monochromatic).

The EnChroma glasses filter out just those problematic frequencies. That doesn’t mean the colors are filtered out completely, just part of their spectra. In doing so, it enhances the ability to distinguish those subtle in-between shades.

The study of color is essentially the study of metamers. Metamers are multiple physical spectra that map to the same color. It’s the reason that TVs and monitors work at all–they emit only RGB, while the real world has infinite variation. But all colors of a certain spectral type all map to the same perceived color, and (within some limits) you can always match that perceived color with just three narrowband frequencies. As far as your brain is concerned, there’s no difference.

Anomalous trichromats have a defect where a larger number of colors are metamers. The glasses alter the spectrum to distribute the metamer groupings more like normal vision. It’s true that they are seeing a very different spectrum than others see. But that doesn’t matter at all, any more than it matters that TVs use RGB and paint is made from a finite set of pigments. The eyes cannot see spectra; they can only see the magnitude of their three sensitivity bands.

I figured it would be something like this. Standardize everything and it just becomes picking the right number or mixing the right quantities. Comics in particular benefit since they demand consistency. Not all art forms can get away with this, though.

Common availability of left-handed equipment, and the lack of beatings in modern schools, may not “cure” left-handedness but they certainly reduce the impact of the problem.

Nearsightedness is a better example. It’s absolutely a disability; I’d sooner lose an arm than have severe, uncorrectable nearsightedness. But of course no one really calls it a disability, because for most it’s virtually cured with glasses or contacts. These devices still have some issues, but it puts people within normal variation, which basically means they no longer have a disability.

Or, LASIK. I had the procedure done and see like a normal person now, from the moment I wake up to when I go to sleep. Am I still “really” nearsighted? Well, my eyes are still the wrong shape, but I have a lens burned into my cornea now. So I guess I still am, but it doesn’t matter in the slightest.

Sufficiently advanced technology means that disabilities can be improved to the point where the word is irrelevant. The EnChroma glasses probably aren’t there yet, but maybe someday. Perhaps they’ll have an implantable version at some point.

Well, ok. I’ll let that be your fight. I don’t personally see anything negative about “disability” in terms of the person–if anything, it emphasizes that it’s just a physical defect and not some kind of character flaw. I like “defect” even better, but I suspect you wouldn’t agree.

In any case, it’s certainly true that it’s all just variation, but there is a point where variation becomes increasingly harder to deal with. Whether that’s at 90% or 99% or 99.9% depends on the characteristics but in any case it shouldn’t be ignored.

35

FWIW, as an aside: Albert Uderzo, the French artist who drew the “ASTERIX” comics, is color-blind. Initially he had his brother Marcel help him with the colors when drawing the pages; later on I understand that he used an indexing system.

36

The problem isn’t you, it’s the type of person who discards people who don’t meet their standards of perfection and would say something along the lines that at least a character flaw is potentially correctable, someone with a physical defect is just broken.

Granted, that’s not a majority of people, but it’s enough to be a problem. If you can’t see that I can only assume you’ve never have a serious disability or had a person with a serious disability in your life.

37

That was compelling and well said, WotNot!

And yet I read that it is in some cases not a handicap. Species that forage together, including humans (in an evolutionary sense at least), tend to maintain a level of “color blindness” of around 2% or 3% in the population. In a group of a couple dozen individuals, only one has to be able to spot a good food source for the whole group to be able to take advantage of it. Full color vision is usually better, but some good food sources are easier to spot for somebody with “color blindness”. Thus an ideal group will include a “color blind” member who will contribute more than their share. I’ve read that airborne bombing crews try to include a “color blind” member for a similar reason. So, usually a handicap, but occasionally a big advantage, in this sense.

I don’t know if it’s ever an advantage for you. Do you ever suspect any of your success comes from an ability to see differently? This is just wondering, if that’s OK; I accept that your overall result is that it is a handicap, and am sorry for that.