I once was colour blind, but now I see

Oxy Iso Glasses (2011)

Originally posted by metafilter.com: read the full article here.

March 5, 2015 8:49 AM Subscribe

Are you color blind? Not for long! Six percent of men and .4% of women are color blind because of the genes they’ve inherited from their parents. The most common color blindness interferes with the ability to see red and green. While playing a game of ultimate Frisbee a decade ago a scientist discovered that glasses he and colleagues had created for use by doctors performing laser surgery allowed a color blind friend to see the colors he had been missing all his life.
posted by mareli (44 comments total) 16 users marked this as a favorite

EnChroma’s technology works by placing a band of absorption on glasses that captures light, pushing the cones away from each other and reestablishing the normal distribution of photons on them.

This seems incorrect.
posted by LogicalDash at 8:59 AM on March 5 [1 favorite]

A problem arises when the red-green cones overlap too much, a condition that accounts for 99 percent of colorblindness cases. When this happens, in the previous scenario, instead of yellow, an individual would perceive little, if any color. EnChroma’s technology works by placing a band of absorption on glasses that captures light, pushing the cones away from each other and reestablishing the normal distribution of photons on them.

It can’t affect the cones themselves. I assume they mean they’re filtering out light that falls in the area of spectrum in which medium- and long-wavelength cones are both sensitive.
posted by Jpfed at 9:01 AM on March 5 [4 favorites]

I’d blame that on the journalist and not the scientist, I think…
posted by showbiz_liz at 9:03 AM on March 5 [1 favorite]

Ultimate Frisbee… is there anything it can’t do?
posted by skippyhacker at 9:07 AM on March 5 [16 favorites]

The article and the scientists say that the colorblind people are seeing colors they’ve never seen before. (The glasses “actually allowed him to see the orange hue for the first time.”). But that doesn’t seem to be how the people are reporting their experience. The guy just says “I can now see the cones.” Big difference.

I doubt that this technology is opening up qualitatively new color experiences to the subjects: it’s just letting people discriminate objects better. Unless the subjects actually say things like, “Wow! I’ve never seen a color like that before!”, I’d wager that the color experiences themselves are familiar to them.
posted by painquale at 9:09 AM on March 5 [4 favorites]

This is not a new concept. Back in 2012, Oxy Iso glasses were big news. I’ve tried them. They didn’t work very well, but that’s probably my eyes and not the fault of the eyewear.

There is a colorblindness test online if anyone is curious about their level of color deficiency.
posted by zarq at 9:12 AM on March 5 [1 favorite]

posted by LogicalDash at 8:59 AM on March 5 [1 favorite]

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Thank you metafilter