Dorothy???

September 18, 2017 3:28 PM

66 year old Bodybuilder William Reed sees color for first time (slyt)
posted by A Terrible Llama (35 comments total)

This is really sweet.

Also, I hope I can look that good at 66. I mean, even at 40.
posted by turbid dahlia at 3:42 PM on September 18, 2017 [3 favorites]

Youtube is full of Enchroma unboxing videos, and they are insanely potent. They feel almost too intimate to watch.
posted by DangerIsMyMiddleName at 3:58 PM on September 18, 2017 [22 favorites]

And every one of these videos makes me tear up.
posted by billder at 4:18 PM on September 18, 2017 [5 favorites]

It's worth watching the video from the beginning, so you can get the full flavor of Cranky Old Man Birthday, complete with the following hits :
- Dismissal of Birthday Song
- Trouble with Packaging
- Attempting to Banter the Wife but Getting Wrecked
posted by suckerpunch at 4:26 PM on September 18, 2017 [13 favorites]

Interesting that the glasses are all dark, like sunglasses. What about for people who already wear eyeglasses? I wonder if they could make clear or prescription lenses, or maybe the dark tint is a necessary part of the technology.
posted by zardoz at 4:54 PM on September 18, 2017

These always make me wish I still knew somebody colour blind so I could watch this.

How do they know what the colours are?
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 5:04 PM on September 18, 2017 [1 favorite]

Did anyone else watch his feet the whole time and worry he was going to fall off the step?
(Very relieved he didn't)
posted by cynical pinnacle at 5:23 PM on September 18, 2017 [7 favorites]

How do they know what the colours are?

I have red green color blindness which, to be clear, is not that red or green look 'grey' to me, but that I have trouble distinguishing the shades between red and green. Like on this colorblindness test in plate #2, I can vaguely see a #3 in pink dots that are surrounded by things that look green and paler green to me, but regularly sighted people can see the 8. In that time, I have learned to recognize certain tones that look "green" to me but other friends and family have identified as more "yellow" so I just learn to know that certain things are a "yellow thing" or "red thing" or a "green thing".

The primary colors of red, green, and yellow on a traffic light are utterly different and distinct to me. I look at a fire truck and see that it is a color that is different from the leaves of a tree, but I also know my wife while point out how she can a tree is changing color and it still looks green to me, and then one day in October, all the leaves are yellow, and I just miss the transition in between.

So to me, and I suppose for him, it's just been a lifetime of remembering the labels that people attach to things even if you have trouble distinguishing them.

I strongly suspect that the reason why 'blue' is a male coded color has to do with the fact that men are more disposed to either total colorblindness or red/green color blindness, and therefore blue is one of the few colors that we can distinguish with confidence. It may just look more vibrant to us because everything else is a bit muddier.
posted by bl1nk at 5:30 PM on September 18, 2017 [10 favorites]

I wonder if they could make clear or prescription lenses, or maybe the dark tint is a necessary part of the technology.

Enchroma does offer prescription lenses, and there's an "indoor glasses" option that's much less opaque than sunglasses, but is still far from clear. They recommend them for brightly-lit rooms and video screens, but not as one's primary glasses.
posted by mumkin at 5:35 PM on September 18, 2017

I strongly suspect that the reason why 'blue' is a male coded color has to do with the fact that men are more disposed to either total colorblindness or red/green color blindness, and therefore blue is one of the few colors that we can distinguish with confidence.

That's an interesting theory, but pink was coded male in most of the prominent department stores as recently as the 1950s. A prominent historian wrote a book that postulates that the firm divide between pink and blue as we understand it today did not actually occur until the 1980s. This was mostly because gender neutral clothing was preferred for children because in-utero sex determination was not common until that point.
posted by xyzzy at 5:54 PM on September 18, 2017 [4 favorites]

an "indoor glasses" option that's much less opaque than sunglasses, but is still far from clear.

The way they work is by filtering out the light that color-blind eyes have the most trouble with. Since that's some light, they're necessarily going to be somewhat tinted.

I'm pretty curious about a lot of the details about these though. Since pretty much all color reproduction technology (cameras, monitors, printing) is based on the particular frquency responses of a non-color-blind, non Enchroma-wearing eye, I'd expect that these glasses might give different color experiences looking at an object vs looking at a picture of the object. I'm curious the extent to which that actually is the case! I guess that effect would be most pronounced with like narrow-spectrum pure yellow light, like LEDs and stuff

Wait wait, hang on a minute. You should also be able to put Enchroma glasses on a white light source to colorize the stuff it shines on for color-blind people!! (Obviously that wouldn't work for emissive displays etc).
posted by aubilenon at 6:20 PM on September 18, 2017

SciShow had a good explanation vid.
posted by cowcowgrasstree at 6:21 PM on September 18, 2017 [4 favorites]

I cried. I admit it.
posted by adam hominem at 6:50 PM on September 18, 2017 [4 favorites]

I love Enchroma videos. I have a playlist I watch whenever I want to feel good about the world and am in a location where I can sob and sob and sob without judgement.
posted by Anonymous at 6:52 PM on September 18, 2017

It just makes me so happy to watch surprised joy, and believe there are surprises left for us all.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 6:54 PM on September 18, 2017 [4 favorites]

One delightful theme through all of them is the discovery of purple. Nearly everyone in these videos who sees a purple object is aghast.
posted by Anonymous at 7:04 PM on September 18, 2017

These videos get me but also the ones with little deaf babies getting implants switched on and hearing their Mama's voice for the first time. Just wondrous.
posted by emjaybee at 7:11 PM on September 18, 2017 [5 favorites]

I, too, have red-green color blindness. My birthday is coming up, and I put some of these on my Amazon wishlist (well, not Enchroma, but a much less expensive alternative that rates better). We'll see.
posted by Hot Pastrami! at 7:14 PM on September 18, 2017 [1 favorite]

First off, that gentle giant's moustache is magnificent

Second, when he started doing that little antsy anxious so happy and overwhelmed I might just die dance, I lost it completely
posted by Hermione Granger at 7:18 PM on September 18, 2017 [11 favorites]

This is one of the nicest things I've watched lately. I don't mind telling you I started crying tears of joy right along with these people. It was so lovely!

"Can you see with our eyes now, baby?"
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 7:48 PM on September 18, 2017

I'd never heard of these glasses, and I definitely just went down the rabbit hole of misting up over an array of happy unboxing videos.

I also went down the rabbit hole of taking Enchroma's color blindness test, which told me first that I had "tritanomaly/tritanopia" color blindness, and then, when I indignantly retook it, that I instead had "mild protan" color blindness. I'm pretty sure that I am not colorblind, and also that I don't entirely trust a site selling color blindness-fixing glasses to tell me the contrary, but now I am also slightly paranoid that I don't really know what colors are.
posted by eponym at 8:18 PM on September 18, 2017 [1 favorite]

Eponym I took the rest, have normal vision and it came back normal.

Make sure your phone doesn't have any filters on it and your brightness isn't too dim (the constrasts on some are rather weak) It looks just like the regular colorblind tests.

Next time you get your eyes checked go ahead and have then run the test, it really is short and exactly like what you took.

Love these videos! Squee!
posted by AlexiaSky at 8:33 PM on September 18, 2017 [3 favorites]

Make sure your phone doesn't have any filters on it and your brightness isn't too dim (the constrasts on some are rather weak) It looks just like the regular colorblind tests.

Ha, thanks for the pointer!

Just took it on my phone instead of my computer, and apparently my color vision is fine but my laptop screen could possibly use some cleaning.
posted by eponym at 8:44 PM on September 18, 2017 [9 favorites]

I just sent a link to a long time friend who's never heard of these and is red/green colorblind. I'm hoping against hope that this helps him.
posted by pjern at 10:21 PM on September 18, 2017

These videos are a study in bottled-up male emotion. It's like watching Field of Dreams.
posted by rory at 3:25 AM on September 19, 2017 [2 favorites]

Eponym: The test said I have normal colour vision, but it was definitely easier (and took less trials to reach a conclusion, I think) on my colour-calibrated desktop display than on my laptop. So I'm thinking your hardware might be a factor.
posted by memetoclast at 3:29 AM on September 19, 2017

Awww, he's like the dad on Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs.
posted by obiwanwasabi at 3:31 AM on September 19, 2017 [2 favorites]

I wonder - do many people who get the EnChroma glasses go on to wear them full-time, or do they use them as a tool when they need/want to see color for some specific reason?
posted by mosst at 7:40 AM on September 19, 2017

I'm red/green. I tried these and eveerything was a bit brighter but not a huge deal. If I use a red filter I can see some of the shapes in the standard test plates, but then everything is also redder of course. So I'm not convinced.
posted by mdoar at 8:35 AM on September 19, 2017

Did anyone else take that EnChroma test and have a bunch of the answers look like undifferentiated blobs with no numbers in them? I pressed "pass" on the ones where I couldn't see any number and it said I have normal color vision but it seems strange. I took it once on my desktop and once on my phone, same thing both times.
posted by beandip at 12:29 PM on September 19, 2017

beandip - yes. I think those are controls; my annual eye exam includes a similar test, and for a few of the images I report "squiggle" or "nothing". I have normal color vision.
posted by current resident at 12:49 PM on September 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

These make me sob, and I don't even care. They are a pleasure.
posted by mynameisluka at 1:43 PM on September 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

Choky videos, but I'm trying to understand the force of some reactions. (granted, there's a bunch of videos of people going "hey, this was neat" as well). I'm coming up short with an analogy for myself; if I suddenly been able to see IR or UV that would be fantastic, but I imagine that the feeling would go towards "neat" rather than mind blown.

Is it about being able to relate to society more fully, are the colours just so much more vivid that it's overwhelming? Personal anecdotes or suggestions for analogy much appreciated.

(of course, if the pool of users is large enough there will be all kinds of reactions, and the emotional ones will be more visible)
posted by monocultured at 2:41 PM on September 19, 2017

if I suddenly been able to see IR or UV that would be fantastic, but I imagine that the feeling would go towards "neat" rather than mind blown.

I would imagine that this is less about "wow this is neat" and more about getting to participate in something that 95% of everyone around you had been constantly experiencing and frequently talking about and so on, for the last 60+ years.
posted by aubilenon at 4:02 PM on September 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

Look at your kids' eyes, Petey. They're so pretty.
posted by ferdydurke at 6:05 PM on September 19, 2017