Perhaps for the color-impaired people, the term "distressed" is a bit too heavy. Lily personally, a little color weakness in certain colors does not affect her daily life. These symptoms only occasionally cause a little trouble. But for other people with color vision disorders, life is not that easy. Some of them couldn't match the right clothes, they couldn’t tell the traffic lights, and they couldn’t even tell if the meat in the pot was cooked.

And a company called Enchroma has developed a pair of sunglasses to help the color blind to complete their daily work. Before we begin to discuss the techniques used in this sunglasses, let's make clear one thing: Color-blind people are not blind, and the world they see is not just black and white. Color-blind people only lack the ability to distinguish colors, and among many kinds of color-blindness, red-green blindness is the most common.

Enchroma's solution is to add a special coating to the lenses of the sunglasses, which filters light that reaches the wearer's eyes. Normal sunglasses filter out light at each wavelength in the entire spectrum, while Enchroma's glasses only filter light in specific wavelengths to enhance the color effect. Because this sunglasses has such an effect, Enchroma calls them "smart sunglasses."

Sunglasses enhance the principle of color schematic

Dr. Don McPherson, vice president of product development, explained: “We were inspired by surgeons. We found that they often brought goggles used in surgery out of the operating room and used them as sunglasses. After further research, I found that this kind of goggles can significantly enhance the wearer's perception of color vision, which explains why the wearer can better distinguish different tissues in the operating room, but when wearing it outdoors You can see more vivid scenery."

Although it doesn't sound complicated, really making such glasses requires a lot of technical support. To design this coating, Enchroma used their proprietary set of optimization methods derived from the mathematical model of the human eye vision system and completed the entire design with the help of a computer.

Cone cells on the retina of the human eye can sense the color of the light and transmit this information to the optic nerve. The most common color blindness is green amblyopia, and the sensitivity of these patients with green-spotted cone cells (M-cones) is significantly reduced. The red blindness caused by abnormal red cone cells (L-cones) is another light disturbance of color vision disorders.

The sensitive areas of the M-cone cells in green amblyopic patients shift to longer wavelength regions, while the sensitive areas of L-cones in red blind patients shift to shorter wavelengths. Enchroma's specially designed filters selectively block specific wavelengths of light that affect the patient's color vision.

The company's first products will use standard Cx series lenses. This lens can be purchased without a doctor's prescription and can be used to enhance the perception of color in normal color vision. In addition, they will provide two additional glasses: Cx-D designed for the green visually impaired and Cx-PT designed for the blind red patient.

All three glasses will use Enchroma's ultra-light 1.3 mm lenses coated with high-precision, ultra-abrasive metal oxide optical coatings. The company also said that when they start selling, they will provide a variety of models for men and women consumers, followed by a product line specifically designed for children.