PSA: Colorblind Glasses That Actually Work!
Basically, it all started on my 16th birthday. I got my driver's permit and started learning how to drive when it hit me: I legit couldn't make out the red lights. I have a very strong version of protanomaly (the kind where red looks like brown and black while green and cyan sometimes look like white or light gray), so you could imagine the pain when I try to make out a red traffic light against the black box holding it up. Yeah, it didn't end well. I also typically didn't pick up on people's brake lights when they lit up (thanks whoever's great idea it was to make those red). Overall, while I learned to adjust, I still tended to have a 2-second delay every time I needed to pick up on a red cue and didn't simply because I needed time to figure out what was going on. I guess this is why it's illegal for colorblind people to drive in Australia.
However, being the type of tinkerer/problem solver I am, I wasn't going to just throw in the towel that easily. I spent weeks scouring the internet for anything I could find. That's when I found EnChroma (just bear with me here). I thought "Hey that's great!" and tried them on. To my disappointment, they did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. It was like wearing a pair of overpriced sunglasses: it literally just darkens colors. It didn't change them. That's when I feared nothing would ever work.
Luckily, I found Colorlite. Trust me when I say these guys actually know what they're doing. They have a diagnostic exam for optometrists to determine your type and severity of CVD. It uses progressive plates with each plate having more subtle differences than the last in problematic colors for people with CVD to determine how strong your deficiency actually is. Based on those results, the optometrist will write a prescription for a lens that is custom-tailored to YOUR specific severity and type. For example, I use a P-25, the P indicating that it's a prescription for people with protanomaly and the 25 indicating that it's a stronger version of the lens. They have lenses to help both deuteranomaly and protanomaly.
When I first put the glasses on, I was actually very surprised how much of a difference they made, given my past "experience" with EnChroma (if you could even call it that). The reds were so bright I didn't even believe that it was right at first. To be sure, I started asking my parents questions about the colors I saw (like Donald Trump's glowing face: it NEVER glowed to me before). The more my hypotheses lined up with their confirmations, the more convinced I was that this was the real deal. I also noticed that when I looked at a basic color Venn diagram, the three primary colors (RGB) actually looked very balanced in brightness (red used to be very dark, while green was very bright), and cyan was no longer white. Fall foliage also glowed in a very pretty way I had never seen before (it used to just look like different shades of brown and green). To help you understand how much of a difference these glasses made think about it like this: if you gave me a set of 36 different colored pencils, I used to only see about 15 different colors and the rest were more or less the same. With these glasses on, I can now see around 33 of the 36 different colors! I also passed the Ishihara test with these on.
If you had a similar story, I definitely suggest you check these guys out. I’m sharing my story because I thought people deserve to see such pretty colors. That being said, the glasses currently only work for trichromatic anomalous green or red deficiencies (they only work on deuteranomaly or protanomaly). If you have dichromacy, monochromacy, or tritanomaly, they probably won't help you. If you want to see the beauty of life like me, check these guys out: https://colorlitelens.com/.
TL;DR If you have trichromatic deuteranomaly or protanomaly and want glasses that actually work (unlike EnChroma for me), go check out Colorlite at the link. These glasses will also help you pass the Ishihara test. This is the real deal.
