I found out I was color blind in high school. I finally had an eye test where they included the colorblind samples. I had better than 20/20 vision and when they told me to read off the number in the circles I thought they were screwing with me. I just started guessing numbers after I couldn’t figure out what was going on. Then they told me it was for color blindness and I was red green colorblind.
I spent years as a kid thinking something was wrong with me because I couldn’t “remember” colors if they didn’t have the name on the crayons (we were on a tight budget and my mom got me the inexpensive crayons and colored pencils). I even came up with excuses why I would accidentally color things like grass brown.
I got those glasses from en chroma a while ago and they are interesting. They work by filtering out the wavelengths that cause the overlap and confusion. It definitely allows me to see shades in red and green I never noticed before but nothing life changing. Those reaction videos are total bunk where people put them on and are immediately in tears. The first line in the instructions tell you that it takes some time for your brain to adjust and to wear them for a while before you can discern a difference. The “these are neat” moment for me was when I went to the store a few hours after wearing them and I saw a bunch of shades of red and green I had never seen before.
I still wear them on occasion when I am building diagrams for work. It helps me navigate color coding my lines.
They are definitely close to snake oil. They are rather expensive and the frames are kinda “meh” for how much they cost. You can get the lenses for other frames, but then you are really sinking a lot of money into something that is more of a novelty.
I got the indoor version for the primary purpose of using them when I work. I struggle the most with colors when looking at a display. They do help me with those tasks but I rarely use them. I usually opt for colorblind friendly palettes and everyone I work with knows I am colorblind; so when I peak a drawing and use wacky colors they know why.
Where I struggle the worst is reading any information presented as heat maps with different shades of colors. It’s like someone is trying to torture me because it just causes me so much confusion. I’ve actually changed my display settings when I have to review a lot of those to grayscale and I’m able to actually understand the content.
I don’t think they sell the indoor model anymore, but it isn’t as effective as their outdoor model. They also have a tint to them since they are still designed to filter out a particular range of wavelengths. The tint is just enough that I look like I am the director for an after hours special on Cinemax and also the tint is dark enough to make them very annoying in lower light situations.
If anyone with a compatible colorblindness is interested in the glasses for fun, get a pair of the sunglasses. Put them on about 3-4 hours before you want to use them for the first time and pick an outdoor place with lots of beautiful plants and flowers.
You being red green colourblind and mentioning diagrams reminds me of my coworker who looked at me like a pranked him when I used a red to green gradient for the spectrum plots with 8 graphs in a single plot. I just interpolated linearly from red to green...
Told me for him they were barely different shades of brown.
Went and let me give a high contrast color pallete fron AI afterwards for accessibility.
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u/cmandr_dmandr Aug 27 '26
I found out I was color blind in high school. I finally had an eye test where they included the colorblind samples. I had better than 20/20 vision and when they told me to read off the number in the circles I thought they were screwing with me. I just started guessing numbers after I couldn’t figure out what was going on. Then they told me it was for color blindness and I was red green colorblind.
I spent years as a kid thinking something was wrong with me because I couldn’t “remember” colors if they didn’t have the name on the crayons (we were on a tight budget and my mom got me the inexpensive crayons and colored pencils). I even came up with excuses why I would accidentally color things like grass brown.
I got those glasses from en chroma a while ago and they are interesting. They work by filtering out the wavelengths that cause the overlap and confusion. It definitely allows me to see shades in red and green I never noticed before but nothing life changing. Those reaction videos are total bunk where people put them on and are immediately in tears. The first line in the instructions tell you that it takes some time for your brain to adjust and to wear them for a while before you can discern a difference. The “these are neat” moment for me was when I went to the store a few hours after wearing them and I saw a bunch of shades of red and green I had never seen before.
I still wear them on occasion when I am building diagrams for work. It helps me navigate color coding my lines.