IamA Colorblind guy who has been using enChroma colorblind correction glasses for the past month. AMA!

I just got a pair a couple weeks ago too! How fucking beautiful is the color green? Does it looks like an entirely different color to you too?

I love the greens, but what I love more are the purples! My wife laughs at me for looking like a creeper staring at purple flowers in people's yards for 5 to 10 minutes at a time :P

Have you seen hot pink yet? The first time I saw it I couldn't take my eyes off it.

Funny story, I have this Hawaiian shirt that I loved. I thought it was a neat looking brown shirt that my wife would never let me wear. Now I understand why I will never wear it again!

http://i.imgur.com/es5fH7t.jpg

Fellow colorblind person here. I don't get it, what's so bad about that shirt? It's khaki.

Haha, so I thought :) turns out, there's a lot of pink in there

I'm just lucky my husband is good with colors (I'm a colorblind gal), because if I'd married a colorblind dude, I'd be in some serious shit. I already stick to combinations of solid colors for clothes, but I like to quilt, and would be totally SOL without his help.

Wow, a colorblind lady! You're a rarity. I remember in high school art class, I had a friend trek me ask the colors. One week she was sick and I wound up with a red and white giraffe

Relevant/obligatory

Truth! I have had to return games that required reflex reactions to colors.

How many fingers am I holding up and what colors are they?

Blue! no.. Yellow!

Do you think they're worth it, overall? I fear that if I get them, and start wearing them that I'll feel like I'm being relegated back to my colorless prison every time I take them off. Plus, $350-500 is a lot :/

Honest answer. There's a part of my that wants to get super excited and rate them a 10/10. But if I look at it critically, I would rate them a 7.5/10, and I think part of that is because I live in ugly Nevada. when I tried them on in California, I was amazed at all the colors the world had! Here in Nevada, it's mostly just browns, but every time I go on a walk, I find some flowers in someone's yard that I fall in love with, or notice the paint job on a neighbor's house that I never noticed before.

When I take them off, I don't feel like a "prison" as you described it, but I do excited to go outside, and put them back on again. You are right, the cost is high (I paid $480 for mine after taxes). Had I paid closer to $300 I would say very, very worth it but at $480, I would say, yes worth it as a luxury expense. If that makes sense.

I'm going to start saving money so that I can buy a pair of these for my son for Christmas 2016. I discovered he was color blind 10 years ago when he was 6 when he tried to tell me which kid on the playground ifo our apartment had taken his gameboy. He kept saying they one in the gray shirt, but none of the kids was wearing gray. When I finally figured out which kid he was taking about, the kid was wearing a bright green shirt. He could identify every other color when i asked.

I took him inside and pulled up a colorblind tests, the kind in the circles. He couldn't see most of them but some he could sorta see, would see a 6 where an 8 was. Now sometimes my kids mess with me so I still wasn't sure. At the bottom of the test was a reverse colorblind one, only colorblind people could see what was inside the circles. I asked him if he could see that one and he said no. I was momentarily relieved. I said "No? You can't see what it says?" He said "No mom, it says NO" When I looked underneith the circle it explained that colorblind people should see the word NO.

We spent the evening explaining how it was no big deal, he just couldn't be a fighter pilot but that plenty of people live just fine lives colorblind. But later that night I was alone in my bedroom and I burst into tears. I was quite shocked at how devastated I felt. Not that anything was wrong with him, but that there was this fundamental thing about how we literally see the world and I didn't share that with my son, could never share with him. My favorite color it's purple but my own son has no idea what it looks like, and I have no idea what it looks like to him.

I never let him know how upsetting that day had been for me and that was the last time I cried about, though if I'm able to afford these next year I suspect I'll cry the first time he sees purple.

That is so awesome (and sad). If it's any consolation my mom went through a similar thing. When I was about 7 we were walking through a park and she told me how sad she was that I couldn't see how beautiful the trees were. I explained to her then that I could see it, and it was beautiful. So know that your son may see things differently, but he can still see and appreciate beauty.

Without the glasses he will know what he knows and love it. With the glasses he will see a new world and love it even more.

Awesome, thanks for the straight forward answer! I'm in the Bay area of CA so lots of colors to see, I think. Also I rock climb in the gym a lot and it's insanely frustrating when they set blue and purple routes, green and orange, pink and green, yellow and orange, etc all right next to each other.

I was in the Oakland area when I tried the glasses for the first time. The staff were really nice, so I promised to mention them if the opportunity arose (eventually purchased from them, and had them ship to NV)

Check out Family Optimetric Vision Care.

Former Las Vegan here. Take your glasses to the Hoover Dam on a beautiful clear day. Then take them to the Strip at night. Particularly if you like green.

Thank you! I think I'll be making a trip in the next few days!

How do these glasses work? What do they do that allows you to perceive colour?

Essential my red and green receptors do not capture light efficiently like they are supposed to. The glasses blast those spectrums into my eye to compensate

What severity of RG colorblind are you? From the enchroma test I have received varying results ranging from Strong Deuteranomaly to Severe :/

I too have been told varying degrees of severity. I just took the online test right now, and I was reported as "Extreme Deutan."

I bet this Christmas season will be completely different with those! Do those work as well on images on a screen as they do for everyday objects?

I sure am looking forward to Christmas this year! There are two types of glasses available: one intended for indoor use, and one intended for outdoor use. The ones I got (you can see in the proof picture) are intended for outdoor use. That being said, I took the colorblind test on the enChroma website, once without the glasses, and once again with the glasses. Without the glasses, I scored Extreme Deutan. With the glasses, I was downgraded to Strong Deutan.

According to their printed material that came with the glasses, they do work better with natural sunlight. In my experience this path month, The outdoors look strikingly different, but I can't read my smartphone at all while wearing them.

The lenses are probably polarized, have you tried using your phone in landscape while wearing them?

So, I need to completely change my answer. I made an error, as I often have my phone brightness dimmed. I turned it ask the way up. Outside, the colors are just wrong. I put a white on my phone, and held my drivers license next to it, the phone want white. It was some kind of yellow. But when I went inside, I played a color matching game, and wow! It was the first time the game was playable.

I imagine it had something to do with how OLEDs emit light that makes some of the colors just look wrong

What color is peanut butter?

Just for you, I took a jar outside and looked at it. And I have no clue! Out sure did smell good though

I'm colorblind too. Doesn't sound like mine is as bad as yours though. Where could I try out a pair? I'm mostly curious and not really convinced they're something I'd want to wear regularly. Do you feel like you could start to depend on them? Perhaps not feel comfortable without them?

I suggest searching for eye doctors / glasses shops in your area. I was able to find one in Oakland CA whom I highly recommend, but places with a pair to try seemed to be very few and far between.

At this point, I don't feel a dependency on them. I don't wear them indoors, and I do sometimes forget to put them on when I go outside. When I'm outside I miss them a little, but I operate just fine.

How has it changed your life? Any downsides?

No downsides what-so-ever. Probably the biggest changes in my life has been my desire to get outside! I walk the dog 2-3 times a day now, just so I can have an excuse to look at the neighborhood. I go down to the park with my wife more regularly. And now that the weather is cooling off (Las Vegas area) I want to go hiking more.

What's your favourite colour?

Purple!

From families point of view whats it like for them wearing the enChroma?

They both reported finding red and greens to be much brighter. Enough so, that my wife thought she would enjoy wearing them regularly, just for the fun of it.

The big difference is that they didn't see any new colors or new shades. When I look at a flower with out the glasses, I see "yellow." With the glasses, I see 5 to 10 different shades from yellow to orange. Neither of my family members experienced that.

Did your perception of red change or of green? Or of both?

Red and green are more vibrant than before. The big change is with ask the new shades I can see. A field of grass has so many different shades that I never saw before

Do you feel like you're missing out now whenever you can't wear the glasses?

I surprised my friend with a pair I purchased for him and he didn't take it amazingly well. He didn't want to wear them because he didn't want to know what he was missing. He did try them on and mentioned how colors looked different immediately. However, he didn't have a mind blown response. He said it was just really confusing.

I admit, I didn't cry when I put them on the first time like some of the videos out there. And it takes a while for your brain to process the new information. After a minute I didn't see much new. After 15 minutes I noticed some things. After 2 hours, I was looking at a new world

Do you use them while using the computer? How does the dark tint affect the other colors and looking at screens. I'm a color blind graphic design enthusiast and I'm considering these if they are noninvasive enough!

I have not had great results with the computer. I am a web programmer, so computer colors are important too. There are two types of glasses, one for indoors and one for idiots. I have the outdoor pair. When I look at a white on my screen and hold my drivers license up next to it, the license looks white, but the screen looks yellowish. That being said, when I play color matching games on they phone, the colors really stand out!

Given the trust you need to put into colors for your work, I would not suggest the outdoor glasses. I don't know how effective the indoor glasses wouldd be though, so it might be with looking into.

Yo. I'm colourblind too, R/G, and my uninformed view is that upon putting on the specs, you now say "Oh, what I thought was green, is actually a different colour. And same for red, etc etc."

Am I wrong? If I'm right, then... what's the big deal? I mean, You and I have lived our lives believing one set of colours to be accurate, and if not, well, so what? Okay, so our reality is a little different to others' and we give colours different names, and once you put on the specs, you see how they see, but like, is that a big enough thing to go out and spent the uber dollars on the specs?

I'm not saying that I love being colourblind, leave me alone in my corner hating everyone else, but I... I don't know. Maybe my mind will be totally changed upon trying them out.

I had similar thoughts at first as well. What I discovered is that there is a whole world of colors out there that I never saw. Before, the leaves of a tree were green. Now the leaves have 10 different shades of green.

okay this is weird but recently I've watched a ton of youtube videos of people trying these glasses for the first time so I was excited to see this AMA haha.

my question is more about your colourblindness in general: did you ever feel like you were missing out on colours before you found these glasses? how did you deal with that? do you wish you weren't born colourblind? have you had any funny moments because of your colourblindness?

ended up being a couple questions, haha

For the most part, I didn't know what I was missing, so it didn't bother me. But there are very definite aspects of my life where I hated being colorblind.

I can't play puzzle games that rewrite you to match colors like match-3s, and bubble poppers. I loved Overlord so much but could figure out the minion colors.

It also makes diving more difficult sometimes. There are flashing lights, yellow means caution, red means stop. I don't know what color it is, so I just stop every time

thanks for the quick reply! I forgot to ask, can you drive? how do you deal with the stoplights?

I can and do drive :) I read stop lights by position. To means stop, bottom is go. In some places there is a single flashing light to either a stop or caution. In those cases I just stop, and can explain to a cop if necessary. Luckily I've never had to

Do the glasses help with driving? Like the example of the single flashing light, can you see the difference now? Or are these the type of thing you are not supposed to wear when driving?

I haven't had an opportunity to see a single flashing light since I got the glasses. I can't day it had improved my diving any. If anything, I'm more distracted now. I notice sunsets, and neat car colors, and other new colors while on the road.

Hopefully you can answer my question, have any of your non-colorblind friends tried them on? I'd really like to know what the world would look like if I, or anyone else without colorblindness, tried them! Thanks :)

I had my wife and step daughter try them on. Both said that reds and greens were much brighter. My wife even wanted to wear then more for the fun of it. But they did not gain all the extra colors like I did.

Thanks for doing this AMA! My dad is R/G color deficient as well and I'm starting to talk to my mom about getting him a pair of these. Is it something we could do as a surprise or are there tests involved beforehand? Also, he needs prescription glasses and doesn't normally wear contacts; do the glasses come in prescription lenses?

Yep, you sure can surprise him! No tests necessary. They can be special ordered to handle perspectives as well.

Awesome, thanks for the reply! So regardless of severity of the color blindness, all of the glasses are the same?

Correct. That being said, there are two different types: heavily shaded for outdoor, and lighter ones for indoor. My brother and I found that the outdoor ones were far more effective. It's like they had to sacrifice sure effectiveness to get ones that weren't as dark for indoors

What is your favorite color? Did it change with the enChroma glasses?

Purple! I used to say I liked the combination of purple and black, but now I am passionate about purple!

Do you have any renders of a before/after type situation? To what degree does it restore color?

After making the YouTube video, my brother and I tried our best to do just that to show our families the difference, but after a while, we gave up. It changed so many things in so many different ways.

Are there negative effects when you take them off relating to headaches or eye aches or anything? I imagine it is like when you take on and off normal glasses a couple times a day where it can give you aches.

I have had no issues with that at all

I'm red/green colorblind too, and heard a lot about the Enchroma glasses. I unfortunately cannot afford the glasses yet, but I'm wondering if they're worth the price. Since you've know what green looked like your whole life, and what it looks like with the glasses, are you somehow able to explain it to someone who has red/green colorblindness too?

The biggest change is how many different greens there are out there that I could never see before. I used to just see a green plant, now I see 10 different shades of green on different leaves, bringing theft plant to life. At $480 it was a little pricey, and priced right for a luxury item. I think if they were closer to $300, they would be very worth it.

Thanks for sharing your story! What are some things whose color surprised you or what is something you see now that you didn't expect?

I think the biggest surprise was suddenly needing a new vocabulary for colors. When I described colors before it was red, green, blue, yellow. Now it's peach, turquoise, and egg white

What was the first thing you remember seeing differently after putting on your glasses for the first time?

There were trees outside. I remember looking at the leaves and I couldn't explain what I was seeing. I kept saying "they're just more... real!" Later I started to describe them as waxy. What I was seeing was all the extra definition in the greens in each leaf.

I'm Colorblind Red-Green. I have been toying with the idea of getting the encore glasses for a few months. But, I'm skeptical that they actually work. It probably seems like a dumb question, but do you see a noticeable difference in the color spectrum. Simply, are you seeing colors you never saw before?

I sure am. I was also very skeptical. You might want to check out the YouTube video I posted at the top. My family also sees a difference, but they don't get ask the new colors I get

Hey, I'm colorblind too. How much are these things? Did your eye insurance offer to pay for any of it?

They cost me $480 after taxes. Insurance won't cover them

With the glasses on, do you see all colors like a non colorblind person would or is it "just" making it possible to differentiate all colors, using colors you already see without the glasses?

The best honest answer I cash give you is I don't know. To the best of my knowledge I see color like everyone else, but I have no idea how to test it

I'm planning to try these in December - but have some practical questions.
How good of quality are the lenses and frames? I tend to buy cheap glasses and replace them yearly because in my experience even expensive glasses get tiny scratches on the lenses, or paint scratches, plastic bends etc. So at almost $500 I'd like to not change them yearly. But I spend a lot of time on beaches, in forests hiking, and there is always going to be wear and tear.

You have the outdoor version - is the only difference tinting?

/edit/ one more question - How long do you think someone should wear them when testing to know if they work or are worth it?

So far, the lens quality seems really good, though I have not been to rugged with them. The difference with the tinting also seems to correlate with the effective of the color correction

My boyfriend is monochromatically color blind (only sees in shades of grey) and attempted similar glasses a few years ago, but instantly had insane headaches and couldn't wear them. Did you have any negative side effects? I'm curious if it was something that might pass with time for him.

I had no issues at all like that. I imagine part of the problem is that they are intended for red/green colorblindness. They work by blasting more red and green into your eyes.

what colors would you say you saw before? were certain colors (like purple and green) grey before? i'm not sure this question can be answered by you but i've always been curious

I never had anything turn to grey. Instead colors often seemed the same. A blue and people would look identical, for example

Could you take a picture through the lenses? I'd like to see what differences the glasses create.

Interesting idea. The one on the left is with the glasses http://i.imgur.com/F5nQFEr.jpg

I wanna get a pair! What's the cost and site where you bought them pls?

Mine cost $480 after taxes. You should be able to get a pair at enchroma.com

Does seeing a whole new spectrum of colors mean you have to learn new colors? I mean, I'm sure you knew the names of all the colors before...but now you really know how they look. After you see a "new" color, do you have to verify with someone else what that color is?

Surprisingly, no. To date I have not seen any "new" colors that are dramatically different from what I have experienced before. Instead I am seeing more distinction in existing colors. Before a green plant was just one shade of green. Now it is 10 different shades of green.

I've been looking into these, and one thing I've been afraid of is walking back inside to the dull world. I'd want to have the enhanced colors all the time, and it would almost look extra shitty back inside or at night. Is it annoying to transition?

I have had two experiences related to this. Here in ugly Nevada, I don't really experience that. But in California, it was heartbreaking to drive home without the glasses.

As someone who is colorblind, I would love something like this. However they are a little out of my price range. How would I go about trying out a pair?

Some eye doctors / glasses stores have them available to try, though they are few and far between. I was able to find a sitter in Oakland, CA

What do you see?

https://i.imgur.com/12LBa2V.jpg

Haha! I somehow knew that's what the picture world be. Without the glasses I see what and fugly brown. With the glasses it's white and gold, and I will hear no arguments otherwise! :)

How much has it changed your perception of reality? I am also red green colorblind and I can't imagine seeing new colors.

There is so much more reality out there than I had previously realized. It's like the difference between stranded definition TV and HDTV. When we had standard definition, we were happy. But when we got HD, we realized how low quality SD was.

I've been thinking about getting some to help. Do you think they are worth the price?

At $480, they are worth it as a luxury item. If they were closer to $300, I would say they would be very worth it

Have you tried both the indoor and outdoor ones? I'd love to hear your comparison of them if you have!

I live in a cold country without much sun, so I'm cautious about getting the darker outdoor ones.

I did try both over the summer. With out a doubt, the outdoor worked outdoor, and the indoor worked indoor, and both were less effective in the other environment

So, wait, you can now see color?

I have always been able to see color, just not well. Note I can see color well

Do the glasses help with colours inside or on a monitor or just outside with natural sunlight?

I think my biggest reason to give them a try would be video games and board games. The latest edition of Catan can be very difficult for me to see the difference between the red and green pieces, as an example. Did you notice any difference in that regard?

They work best outdoor. I have found that computer colors are off, but gaming with color is now fun and possible!