

Color for the Colorblind - SeanDav
http://boingboing.net/2014/05/09/color-for-the-colorblind.html

======
audeyisaacs
There's no information about how they work in OP's link, but the manufacturers
site explains it(although I still found it a little difficult to grasp).

Basically, they cut out some parts of the spectrum where the cones in a colour
blind eye overlap a lot.

"There are two types of red-green color blindness: deutans and protans.
Deutans, which are 75% of cases, have a defect in the green cone cells. In
this case, the defect causes the green cone cell to be spectrally shifted
towards red. Green becomes more like yellow. Protans, which are 25% of cases,
have a defect in the red cone cells. In this case, the defect causes the red
cone cell to be spectrally shifted towards green. Red becomes darker and more
like orange.

These spectral shifts degrade the quality of color information sent to the
brain. Some colors like blue and yellow are not affected, but shades of green,
orange, brown, red, pink and purple are muddled and washed out. If the color
blindness is strong, it can be difficult to correctly name these colors,
causing problems with jobs and many everyday tasks. People with red-green
color blindness can usually see between 10,000 to 100,000 shades of color.

The EnChroma Cx uses a special extra-strength version of the Digital Color
Boost™ coating. By removing the wavelengths of light where overlap is
occurring between the red and green cone cells, the spectral shift can be
reversed, amplifying the color signal sent to the brain. The result is that
colors appear to be brighter and more pure. Thousands more shades can be seen.
Colors can be recognized more quickly and with less confusion. For many, the
effect is a profound emotional experience."

[http://enchroma.com/technology/how-it-
works/](http://enchroma.com/technology/how-it-works/)

~~~
a-priori
Colour vision is based on an opponent process [1]. There are three kinds of
colour receptors called L, M and S (for Long, Medium and Short) and they are
receptive to colours centred around the red, green, and blue parts of the
visible light spectrum respectively.

Here is a good graph showing how sensitive each receptor is to different
wavelengths of light:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cone-fundamentals-with-
srg...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cone-fundamentals-with-srgb-
spectrum.svg)

But we don't perceive colour directly from these receptors. Instead, our
visual systems combine the output of these receptors to form three channels:
black vs. white (L+M+S), red vs. green (L-M) and blue vs. yellow (S-(M+L)).
This is why there is no such colour as a reddish-green or a bluish-yellow; our
visual systems are not able to perceive these (except under exceptional
laboratory conditions). As you can see in the graph, the L, M and S receptors
aren't just receptive to pure red, green and blue but to a range of
wavelengths centred near these colours, and they all overlap to some degree.
But the L (green) and M (red) receptors overlap quite a bit.

In red-green colour blindness, either the L or M are shifted so they're even
closer. This means that the red vs. green (L-M) channel is no longer able to
distinguish between the two, so this channel is always close to zero and the
person no longer sees either red or green just something muddy in between.
Blue-yellow colour blindness is similar, but in this case it's the S channel
that's shifted towards the L and M. In this case it overlaps with both and
this means there's no longer any colours that activate the S without also
activating L and M (and vice versa), making it impossible to distinguish blue
from yellow.

For more information:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opponent_process](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opponent_process)

These glasses work by notching out the parts of the spectrum where the
receptors overlap the most. Assuming this works as described, they claim that
this increases the relative difference between their outputs, making it easier
for colour blind folks to distinguish the colours.

------
fabiandesimone
I'm colorblind and I'm very interested in this.

A few years back I purchased for over 700 euros a pair of Chromagen glasses
that promised to do the same.

[http://www.chromagen.us/](http://www.chromagen.us/)

With the Chromagen glasses you had to go to an specialist place and get your
eyes tested with a variety of glasses to see which combination was the best
for your type of colorblindness. Luckily for me both glasses were the same
colors (pink, which even if I can't see it properly, I would prefer if they
were another color).

Some interesting things since I had the glasses:

\- The first time I saw red trough the glasses was surreal: coca-cola, a
tomato, carrots, etc. Was a very emotional moment because you realize how much
info is missing in your sight.

\- As much as I got excited when wearing them I got depressed when taking them
out. The world is excessively green to me which once I saw the world with red
in it, a green world is incredibly boring.

\- While I tried to make them as fashionable as possible (had the glasses on
an Oakley frame (hey it was 10 years ago) I don't think they look to good.

\- They were not really sunglasses per se, so I would wear them and still be
bothered with the sun which this new ones seem to have figure out.

I will sure give this ones a try. They look good, seem to be fashionable
enough and the price is accesible.

Just need to figure out the emotional aspect of it as is really something. I
wonder is there's a correlation between mood with colors and colorblind people
that can't see red being generally grumpier.

P.S: talk about resting on your laurels. Chromagen always had a marketing
issue in my opinion and this is just surreal:

[https://www.evernote.com/shard/s3/sh/decd967f-f4da-4ff3-b9fa...](https://www.evernote.com/shard/s3/sh/decd967f-f4da-4ff3-b9fa-698c9b9714f1/76ee08ce124a0f40493fe48f96518451)

They are displaying Google Ads in their site and I get a retargeting ad of
EnChroma Glasses.

~~~
soci
According to the site test I'm profiled as Strong Protan. No glasses are
available to fully fix my colorblindness, since are only are available for
medium protans.

------
pttuttatt
Kind of interesting to get insight into how much of a handicap color blindness
is via the revealed preference of whether you'd she'll out $X for them. A
different article, David Pogue:

"The highlight came on Day 4 of my tests, when my kids discovered a rainbow
arcing across the sky...

Then I put on the glasses. Unbelievable! ... I don’t mind admitting, I felt a
surge of emotion. It was like a peek into a world I knew existed, but had
never been allowed to see...

So would I pay $600 for these glasses?

The truth is, I don’t consider colorblindness much of a handicap..."

[http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/pogue/2013/08/15/glasses-
tha...](http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/pogue/2013/08/15/glasses-that-solve-
colorblindness-for-a-big-price-tag/)

~~~
Dylan16807
To an extent that's true. But as a counterexample look at how certain
communities of deaf people get... very strange about the condition and would
even reject a free fix.

~~~
Homunculiheaded
To be fair though a huge difference is that the deaf community is bound
together by a common language. Language is hugely important in human social
groups. A "free fix" for members of this community comes at the cost of the
eventual annihilation of their shared language. This is why you typically
don't see the same reaction from medical advancements in vision from the blind
community, whose impairment has no effect whatsoever on their primary language
(and just to be clear Braille is simply a character mapping to the readers
native language while sign languages such as ASL are actually distinct
languages).

------
HarryHirsch
This is a neat idea - a notch filter. The underlying biology is that colours
that excite mostly just one type of cone cells are perceived as pure. In
colourblind people the absorption spectra of the red and green cones overlap
to a greater degree, so if you can cut out the overlap their vision more
closely approaches that of a normal-sighted person - except for the part that
is filtered out.

But with the recent Amazon flap, should this be patented? It's in essence a
neat idea, and physics supply shops will sell you stock dichroic filters for
USD 150 each, custom ones are more but not excessive - development cannot have
been more than USD 100000 total. That's a programmer's salary and benefits.

Software patents are universally considered abusive because it is cheap to
develop - much cheaper than an industrial process, the thing that patents were
invented to cover. With this logic the producers shouldn't be allowed to take
out a patent.

~~~
joshvm
You couldn't patent a notch filter for obvious reasons.

On the other hand the coating isn't a notch filter, it's a series of
bandpass/notch/dichroic/whatever filters which are optimised for colour
blindness. If you look at the transmission graphs at least for the UV450
there's varying transmission over the entire visible range. So the patent
would be for filters at X, Y and Z nm in a product designed for eyewear.

The problem with software patents is that they're extremely broad - e.g.
things that are obvious and well documented in the literature like sorting.
There are also obvious hardware patents like rounded corners.

A good example of a design patent is Blackberry's keyboard. They didn't patent
keyboards, but they _were_ able to patent the little bumps that help you
navigate.

As someone who works in hardware, sure in raw materials it cost <100k, but
when you start charging for people's time, stuff gets a whole lot more
expensive. Not everyone can live off ramen and sleep in the office. This
probably took a few years to properly develop.

The patents (applied for) are below:

[http://www.sumobrain.com/patents/wipo/Multi-band-color-
visio...](http://www.sumobrain.com/patents/wipo/Multi-band-color-vision-
filters/WO2012119158.html)

[https://www.google.com/patents/WO2012119158A1?cl=en&dq=inass...](https://www.google.com/patents/WO2012119158A1?cl=en&dq=inassignee:%22ENCHROMA+INC.%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=W2luU6fRAe-g7Ab8koHQDg&ved=0CEgQ6AEwAg)

------
korethr
It is advancements like this that give me hope for the humanity. This isn't
the same level as Geordi La Forge's visor in Star Trek: TNG, but it _is_ in
the same vein -- using technology to give senses to those born without them,
and thus improve their quality of life. More and more it feels like we are
beginning to live in the future speculated about in decades past.

------
robotcookies
What would happen if someone who isn't colorblind wears these? Do the reds
appear even stronger?

~~~
qwerty_asdf
I wondered the same thing. I want to try on a pair, just to contrast my total
lack of emotional response against the response of those who benefit from
these glasses.

Also, I wonder if similar technology could be used to better visualize the
presence of UV light, or maybe infrared (sans electricity), beyond the realm
of typical human perception.

~~~
chinpokomon
Just last week I was wondering if this was possible. I hadn't heard about
these glasses until today, but I was thinking about the possibility of
bringing UV into the visible spectrum.

Mostly this was based on something I had read about with respect to cataract
surgery. Apparently the lenses block UV from reaching the retina, but with
cataract surgery that isn't the case and patients have to wear glasses to
prevent excess UV from damaging the eyes. Apparently Monet [1] had cataract
surgery in 1923 and his paintings from that era suggest that he was seeing
something in the UV spectrum.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Monet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Monet)

------
Harelin
I have difficulty cooking meat by sight as a result of my color blindness. I
wonder if these glasses would help.

~~~
PhantomGremlin
I don't think they would work. The article says:

    
    
       They only work outdoors on a sunny day
    

I think the reason for that is found on the company's website where they claim

    
    
       10% visible transmission
    

So things are obviously very dark if these are worn indoors.

~~~
blincoln
Things may be completely dark indoors, depending on the type of lighting.

For example, fluorescent lights emit three spectral spikes centered on where
typical human eyes are most sensitive to red, green, and blue. They emit
basically no light in other parts of the spectrum. So if the notches in these
glasses' spectral filters don't line up with those spikes, they'll be totally
opaque under fluorescent lighting.

On the flipside, instead of wearing glasses indoors, someone could probably
make an LED lightbulb with LEDs whose output was centered on the same
frequencies as the notches in these glasses. It should have a similar effect
for the colourblind - same principle, just applied in a different way.

------
dps
I have a r/g color blind friend who has a pair of these.

He said: "They are amazingly totally worth the money and work very well. I
have video of myself realizing that Starbucks is green and not brown for the
first time. Mindfuck I thought brown like coffee."

------
brunnsbe
As a colorblind I find it a little bit offensive that it in the aricle says
that "colorblind react significantly slower to red signals". Red is the
topmost light, green is the bottom one. I just follow the light that is turned
on, why would it make me significantly slower? Would a not colorblind driver
drive if the uppermost light turns green and not red?

~~~
humbledrone
I believe it's fairly well established [1][2][3] that protanopia does make it
harder to see red traffic lights, and increases reaction time. A couple
studies I looked at indicated that using the position of the light as
compensation is quite effective, but it doesn't seem questionable that it is,
in fact, more difficult to do.

Color is remarkably useful for fast recognition of objects. Take this famous
experiment [4] that showed the existence of synesthesia. People without
synesthesia take _much_ longer to locate the 2s in the field of 5s. But people
with synesthesia who perceive numbers to have color can find them trivially.

Anyway, as for this being offensive to you -- how is it any different than
other facts like "short people have more difficulty reaching objects on high
shelves" or "people born without a sense of smell cannot easily detect gas
leaks?" These are simple facts, and there's nothing offensive about stating
them.

[1]
[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1444-0938.2002....](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1444-0938.2002.tb03045.x/pdf)

[2]
[http://www.ltrc.lsu.edu/TRB_82/TRB2003-000250.pdf](http://www.ltrc.lsu.edu/TRB_82/TRB2003-000250.pdf)

[3]
[http://eprints.qut.edu.au/29558/1/29558.pdf](http://eprints.qut.edu.au/29558/1/29558.pdf)

[4]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Synaesthesiatest.jpg](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Synaesthesiatest.jpg)

~~~
chinpokomon
The green on a stoplight isn't pure green for the same reason. It has a little
blue mixed in to help those with red-green color blindness to be able to see
the lights.

------
timmyelliot
It seems like a novelty toy.

Apparently, they won't help you pass the Ishihara Color vision test,
[http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/15/glasses-that-
solve...](http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/15/glasses-that-solve-
colorblindness-for-a-big-price-tag/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0)

------
b0b0b0b
Could the same effect be achieved in software for computer displays?

~~~
CHY872
As far as I am aware, this is not possible. Computer displays work by sending
light in a few wavelengths (but in different intensities), using the
combinations of different frequencies to produce the same effects as single
frequencies. This product seems to work by aggressively filtering out the
parts of the spectrum that cause problems. This would not be possible with
normal screens, because the light is of a (mostly) fixed wavelength. These
glasses would be much better with objects (for example) illuminated by the
sun.

~~~
RaptorJ
Similarly, I think these would work much better with incandescent lighting vs
flourescent or LED.

------
cocolos
what about people who already wear glass? I guess I will still need to get
contacts to use them

~~~
MegaDeKay
They have a version called EnChroma Cx Receptor that is meant to fit over your
glasses. I found out about these today thanks to this post and plan to order a
pair.

[http://enchroma.com/shop/cx-receptor/?attribute_pa_frame-
siz...](http://enchroma.com/shop/cx-receptor/?attribute_pa_frame-
size=large&attribute_pa_frame-color=shblk)

