EnChroma - Glasses for colour blindness correction.

JohnGC

JohnGC

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I'm 'fairly' colourblind to the extent that I always want my wife on board for passages at night. The amount of brown flashing lights around Portsmouth harbour would surprise many of you.

I have no experience of these Enchroma glasses though I'd be pleased to hear others' experience. I believe they effectively 'add colour' to what you are seeing but don't 'correct' defective colour vision to normal levels of perception.

If they are that good, I'll get a pair but I am a born cynic so I'll wait for the experiences of others.

Your thoughts/experiences anyone?
 
I'm red/green colour blind but I can normally see both colours on nav marks. Where I struggle a bit is in distinguishing some green lights from white lights. The colour of some green lights is a bit poor.
 
savageseadog said:
I'm red/green colour blind but I can normally see both colours on nav marks. Where I struggle a bit is in distinguishing some green lights from white lights. The colour of some green lights is a bit poor.
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I have a PPL with a colour blindness restriction. The medical test was a lantern test (after I failed the spot cards spectacularly) with increasingly smaller light sources in different colours. Colour blindness means having lower than normal density of colour receptors (of all or some colours), so during the test eventually the image of the spot of light became too small to trigger enough colour receptors and the light appeared white.

Like most others with red/green colour bindness I can distinguish marks in daylight OK, and traffic lights at night are big enough to be colour delineated. It is point sources of light that course problems.

I wonder if a pair of old fashioned stereo glasses (red/blue) could be adapted to work like a seakey?
 
SAPurdie said:
Do 'really' colour blind users of the seakey have to get the filters labelled? e.g. The red filter is the grey one next to the grey one...
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There’s a common perception that colour blind folks don’t see colours but shades of grey. That’s not correct for the majority of people. Where the problem lies is telling the difference between one colour and another: most commonly red and green. For example, I simply cannot see holly berries on the tree from say 4 or 5 metres: get in a bit closer and suddenly the berries appear. The distance varies enormously with the light level: the lower the light, the less easy it is to see the berries.

Translate that into looking at navigation marks and lights: I can tell the difference between red and white easily, I have problems differentiating between green and white. Red and green are usually quite easy to separate but some times the green looks closer to white to me.

It also means I pay more attention to buoy shapes than colours, although the newer plastic buoys are easier to identify as their colours don’t fade as much and they’re “stronger” to start with. All good fun. I’ve tried the Seakey gadget but tend to rely on the superior judgment and colour perception of the Admiral.
 
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My understanding of "colour correction" glasses is that they work by simply filtering out light of red or green in one one eye, and the other colour of the two in the other eye. The resulting perception is that one eye sees red as black, and the other sees green as black; so when the entire image is perceived, both red and green parts become evident by the difference. In most cases of colour blindness, normal colour perception is maintained close to the centre of the retina. And even with normal colour perception, the outer areas of the retina have no colour perception; and in low light conditions, no one has colour perception.
 
elton said:
My understanding of "colour correction" glasses is that they work by simply filtering out light of red or green in one one eye, and the other colour of the two in the other eye. The resulting perception is that one eye sees red as black, and the other sees green as black; so when the entire image is perceived, both red and green parts become evident by the difference. In most cases of colour blindness, normal colour perception is maintained close to the centre of the retina. And even with normal colour perception, the outer areas of the retina have no colour perception; and in low light conditions, no one has colour perception.
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Not so for these. See the link in the OP.
 
The "explanation" is nonsense. The sensitivity spectrum of red and green cones overlaps the same for everybody. Here's one of the very many web sites that describes how colour vision works.
https://midimagic.sgc-hosting.com/huvision.htm
It goes on to explain colour vision deficiencies

There are several companies selling lenses that are claimed to correct colour vision deficiency. They don't do any such thing. They merely remove part of the spectrum.
 
JohnGC said:
Oh yes it does! (Sorry it's that time of year.)

On the page I linked to;
View attachment 74928
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It's hard to understand what they mean, but I can't believe it's anything other than a red or green filter over one eye. I have no idea what they mean by "proprietary", but there's no patent on coloured light filters. The only types of light filter I know of are coloured filters and polarising filters, and it isn't a polarising filter.

I might add that I know a fair bit about colour vision, since I studied it in undergraduate psychology. I was chosen as a test subject in a practical group experiment, in which the rods and cones of my retina were mapped.
 
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JohnGC said:
May be of interest to sailors.

1:12 men & 1:200 women have some colour blindness and red/green is the most common form.

I have no personal experience of these (I'm not colour blind).

But the explanation seems plausible and the reactions of users seems believable.
https://enchroma.com/pages/technology

Lots of Youtube videos on this; here's one such.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNwJpNVpvEM&index=24&list=PLmIWnKs95UHb-lRkY0AEbIVqOowxFcn7M
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What a pile of unadulterated ****.

It looks like they paid him to say all that in Mars Bars. With his premature hair loss, he's got bigger problems than colour blindness. I wonder why purple and blue are even mentioned; very, very few are blind to blue. He seems to suggest he can see red and green with the specs, and there is no possible way that he could. He might now be able to better differentiate between them, but he cannot see an improvement in perception of either.
 
elton said:
What a pile of unadulterated ****.

It looks like they paid him to say all that in Mars Bars. With his premature hair loss, he's got bigger problems than colour blindness. I wonder why purple and blue are even mentioned; very, very few are blind to blue. He seems to suggest he can see red and green with the specs, and there is no possible way that he could. He might now be able to better differentiate between them, but he cannot see an improvement in perception of either.
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Why do you feel the need to bolster your argument with rude and irrelevant observations about hair loss?
 
JohnGC said:
Why do you feel the need to bolster your argument with rude and irrelevant observations about hair loss?
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Because along with many others sufferers of hair loss, it annoys me to see these kind of desperate and futile efforts to hide it. It's a habit that makes a bad impression on all of us.
 
elton said:
Because along with many others sufferers of hair loss, it annoys me to see these kind of desperate and futile efforts to hide it. It's a habit that makes a bad impression on all of us.
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That still has nothing to do with colour blindness. If you think his poor taste in hair styling (which is just your opinion after all) invalidates his observations on his own colour blindness; then you are expressing prejudice.

I find you comments on colour filters weak; it doesn't mean I think your a git, only that you haven't produced an argument that is convincing.
 
On the subject of colour blindness at sea: I often sail with somebody who is colour blind. He appears usually to make out near objects fairly well, but, like the pilot above, struggles with point sources. Sometimes he seems to be able to tell, especially when close at hand, but far off lights which are not given away by context are more difficult. He uses a pair of regular passive 3D glasses, tucked into an oilskin pocket. By peering through one then the other lens, he can tell red from green buoys at sizeable distance.

I'm not sure whether it's in any way related, but he seems much better than me at spotting lights in general, even if he can't then tell what colour they are. Entering Cherbourg with him this summer, still in daylight, I was trying to find a leading light—I described its characteristic, and he almost immediately pointed it out. I stared for a while, looked through the binoculars, and eventually located it a good 10 mins or so after he did. I do not generally struggle with picking out lights, and still saw it in plenty of time, so this is not purely down to my incompetence.
 
JohnGC said:
I find you comments on colour filters weak; it doesn't mean I think your a git, only that you haven't produced an argument that is convincing.
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I don't need to convince anybody. I know all about colour blindness, in part because of my own deficit, but also from my university studies in psychology. He's provided no evidence that those glasses work, and I know they can not.
 
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