U.S. firm develops glasses for colorblind, good for sports, children

A U.S. firm has given thousands of people their first look into the colors red and green by tricking the brain with a pair of sunglasses.

EnChroma, based in Berkeley, north of San Francisco, developed the colorblindness corrective gear two years ago and recently launched an upgraded model of sunglasses allowing users to play sports and is child-friendly.

Over 340 million people around the world suffer from colorblindness, as the condition can hinder simple everyday activities, like driving.

"It's not a serious condition," EnChroma's vice president Donald McPherson told Xinhua. "But it can make simple tasks appear impossible for the colorblind because they cannot make the distinction, for example, at traffic lights between red and green, and this is something that can be life-threatening."

Usually, colorblind people are not allowed to work as policemen, firemen, pilots or electricians, because even though they can distinguish most of the colors, their brains mistake red and green, especially when they are faint hues. Those with normal color vision have three photo-pigments in their eyes that are responsible to capture the light, with the brain doing the math to transform them into the right color, whether it is blue, purple, yellow or red.

"Colorblind people overlap the red and green pigments in the brain a lot, so they get muddied colors," McPherson said. To help the brain separate these hues, EnChroma developed a glass that divides red and green, cutting a little bit of light between the two colors.

With the corrective glass, McPherson said, "the normal wavelengths are restored because it captures the right pigments, making the brain understand which colors are there."

McPherson was a leading researcher at University of California at Berkeley working on the issue with a grant from the U.S. National Institutes of Health. He received a doctoral degree in glass engineering and in 2010, after five years of extensive research, decided to start up a company with his colleagues and market their product, which had been a success in clinical trials.

"Colorblindness is not just an aesthetic issue," he said, it " can even be mistaken as a learning disability in children, because books and classes are not prepared for people who cannot see red and green."

The condition typically afflicts men because the recessive trait is passed on mainly to male offsprings. According to statistics, one in 12 men is colorblind, while one out of every 34 women has the condition.

EnChroma's next move is to launch indoor glasses for the colorblind. "They look like regular glasses, with transparent crystals, so they can be worn at the office or during class, which will help millions of people go about their work or their daily tasks in a regular way," McPherson said. Endite