Glasses that Correct Color Blindness

So what is color blindness exactly? Well, in every eye there are things called cones that are sensitive to different color lights. Normally, humans have three different types of cones that are each sensitive to blue, green, or red. However, in certain cases with humans it is possible for some of the rods to have shifted color sensitive or the rods are missing all together, causing dramatic decreases in visual range. For examples, anomalous trichromatism is when there is a shift in the sensitive of one the rods. A common example of this is when the peak sensitivity of the green cones moves toward a higher wavelength, overlapping with the sensitivity of the red cones. This leads to red green colorblindness, where people have a difficulty distinguishing between red and green and many of those colored objects take on a orange tint.

A normal human has rods that can see three unique colors. People with anamalous vision, or dicromatic (only two function cone type) vision have a much more limited color range. Source

A typical example of a red green color blindness test. Source

However, there is a new type of product on the market now called the Encroma. The company claims that these glasses can be used to help correct people with red green color blindness. In principle, the product seems pretty simple. Colorblindness is caused by difficulty in distinguishing colors because the sensitivity of the respective cones overlap. However, the important thing to remember is while the ranges overlap, they do not 100% overlap. These glasses can take advantage of this property by filtering out the most common wavelengths that overlap in people in red green colorblindness. This allows the light that actually reaches their eyes to be solely detectable by either the green or red cones, dramatically increasing color discrimination. This product has been around for a couple years and a quick search of Encroma glasses on Youtube returns plenty of videos of it having dramatic effects of many people. Could it also be something that helps you or someone you know? More information can be found at their website here.

One of the styles of Enchroma glasses Source