Comment by krisgee | Hacker News Reader

Comment by krisgee | Hacker News Reader

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>This makes me wonder if some new colorblindness glasses manufacturer is planting "viral" content.

This is it. Last couple of rounds of these "magic glasses" have also followed the same pattern, trying to prey on colourblind people's loved ones to buy them these expensive glasses. Everything I've read from people who've actually tried this says they're underwhelming, they work by blocking some of the spectrum around where you have issues (for instance I'm Red/Green so I have issues around those colours but especially browns and purple) so you can distinguish differences more clearly.

They do NOT let you see more colours magically, just distiguish the now reduced colour set better.

I'd love nothing more than some magical solution to cure my colourblindness, when I was a kid up till I was 15 (I got diagnosed really late) my top three careers were Astronaut, Military Pilot and Commerical pilot, if anyone remembers that one scene in Little Miss Sunshine that was very close to my reality. Unforutnatly until we start replacing eyeballs somehow it just doesn't exist.

tl;dr don't buy these, they're trying to use your impulse to do something nice for someone against you.

I had only heard of Enchroma but then stumbled across and bought some Pilestone glasses last month. I think they cost me around £120 here in the UK.

At first I put them on and they just made everything look tinged with pink so removed them after a minute or two. Then I noticed the instructions. I had assumed glasses didn't need instructions but all it said was to leave them on for at least 15 minutes for your eyes to adjust.

My eyes did 'adjust' after a few minutes more and while it wasn't something that would make me cry like the viral videos, there was definitely an emotional reaction. I wore them on a walk through the countryside and the vivid colours of certain flowers did make me stop and I found I couldn't stop grinning.

I did find that reds look a bit orange - things like the Royal Mail van which is certainly red appeared quite bright and what I would previously have called orange. Who knows if that's wrong or right though? It's hard to know how everyone else sees things.

I don't wear the glasses day-to-day but I do take them with me if we are going somewhere picturesque.

The reaction of ‘grinning’ you describe was the same for me when my sense of smell was fixed surgically and began working properly some years ago.

For comparison, you could have someone who isn't colourblind wear the glasses for a bit, and ask them if the reds appear orange to them.

I'll second your recommendation to not buy these glasses. However, you don't need a miracle or replacement eyeballs. Gene therapy has already been shown to work to cure color blindness. Dr. William Hauswirth at the University of Washington did that in monkeys back in 2009, and currently has a grant to trial a gene therapy to cure achromatopsia in humans, though I have no idea how that is going. I'd guess color blindness will be curable in my lifetime.

I saw an article about nano particle injections that could allow the eye to see in infrared. I would hope colorblindness would be trivial if they could allow infrared vision but I am unsure of the challenges. [1]https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/28/a-nanoparticle-injection-i...

My wife got me these as a wedding gift present. Didn't make a difference for me--maybe a little more contrast in the different "greens". The next morning my cousin and brother (also both colorblind) tried them on and thought they were amazing. My cousin had the viral marketing reaction.

After seeing one of the earlier viral videos and a blog-article or two, my S.O. and I scraped together enough money to buy a pair of the Enchroma glasses for an older relative a couple years ago (it was somewhere close to $800 if I recall right, I got another relative to chip in but it was still tough for us to afford)-- the reaction was underwhelming to say the least. We've never spoken of it since.

I would caution people not to expect anything. Unless the high price of these things is pocket change for you, don't do it. Maybe find a way to demo them, or assume up front that you may end up needing to ask for a refund.

I was under the impression they had a 30-day return guarantee, no questions asked?

The effect depends a lot on the specific color deficiency each person has.

If we had prepared them in advance that this was just a trial thing and not made it out as a big deal, things would have gone differently. These viral clips kind of encourage you to make an occasion of it, though, which is the part that stings.

It became too awkward for the recipient to return it after such a fuss was made, I think (also we waited for a particular holiday, which ate into the return window). It was left with an "I'll keep trying them out", and that was that. There was a vague mention a few weeks later about how it made some flowers maybe look a tiny bit different, but if there was any real effect it was not significantly life enhancing for this person, and certainly not worth all the hullaballo or expense.

Not sure why you're downvoted. The referenced paper discloses (p6) “KK holds shares in EnChroma®”.

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