Colour blindness affects some 350 million people worldwide. Lawyers, museum curators, chemistry professors, teachers, law enforcement officers, doctors, grocery clerks, and students, among others, all must adjust their jobs and lives -- in large and large and small ways -- according to their colour vision deficiencies. If you are colourblind, a colour-coded lab result may be unreadable, a painting muted and dull, a stoplight incomprehensible. It’s like walking through a blurry world without your glasses. Colour blindness changes the lives of those affected more than you might think.
Think you might be colour blind? Take a colour blind test here.
One segment of the colourblind population that is often under-supported and misunderstood is colourblind women. One in 200 women are colour vision deficient. This means that while people with normal colour vision see over one million shades of colour, these women see only about 10% of those hues and shades. Red green colour blindness (an umbrella category for deutan and protan colour blindness) is the most common, causing colour vision deficient people to see a less vibrant world. It also causes “colour confusion” at times.
This means that in school, for example, some of a person’s most formative years, colourblind people can run into unexpected and inexplicable difficulties. Because of a lack of testing, young women, more often than men, can go years without realizing that some difficulties they encounter in school are due to colour blindness. According to a recent survey of colourblind women by EnChroma, maker of cutting-edge colourblind glasses, colour blindness can have a negative impact on educational experiences. Nearly 25% (18 of 82) of female respondents did not learn they were colour blind until after the age of 15. The average respondent learned when she was 11 years old. “Even my colour blind relatives didn’t believe I was colour blind because I’m a girl and thought I just wanted attention, so I didn’t get diagnosed until high school,” says Piper Bodden, a museum curator. One woman did not learn she was colour blind until age 44. In the survey, 81% of women believe they endured extra struggles or delays before doctors, educators or their parents suspected and/or accepted that they were colourblind. Two-thirds were teased in school for being colour blind. Because colour blindness is relatively uncommon in women, nearly half say they face more challenges than colour vision deficient men.
EnChroma user Harlee Sharp sees the full spectrum of colour for the first time through EnChroma colour blind glasses.
These statistics point to issues that go well beyond colour blindness, but simple steps can and should be taken in our schools and workplaces to improve the lives of our colourblind women and men. EnChroma and EnChroma colour blind glasses are a small part of that effort. EnChroma’s cutting-edge colour blind corrective glasses combine the latest in colour perception, neuroscience and lens innovation to alter colour deficient vision. The EnChroma Colour Accesibilty Program™ brings colourblind glasses to museums, school districts, and state parks across the country so that more women and men, young and old, are able to explore the world in its intended colour and vibrancy. The National Institutes of Health, recent studies from France’s INSERM Stem Cell and Brain Research Institute and the University of California, Davis, as well as the thousands of colour blind women who’ve tried EnChroma glasses, agree that EnChroma glasses are the best colourblind glasses on the market today and the only glasses backed by science. If you’re a colour blind woman, or know of someone who is, try our glasses. You have 60 days to return them for a full refund if they don’t work for you so there is nothing to lose!
EnChroma earned the 2016 Tibbetts Award from the U.S. Small Business Administration in recognition of its innovative impact on the human experience through technology, and the 2020 Innovation Award in Life Sciences from the Bay Area’s East Bay Economic Development Alliance.
Photo of Emma Cornbower, CoFounder and Game Developer for Digital Strawberry LLC, wearing EnChroma glasses, courtesy of Emma Cornbower
Accessibility and Colour Deficiency: Colour Blind Women in the Workplace and the World
Colour blindness affects some 350 million people worldwide. Lawyers, museum curators, chemistry professors, teachers, law enforcement officers, doctors, grocery clerks, and students, among others, all must adjust their jobs and lives -- in large and large and small ways -- according to their colour vision deficiencies. If you are colourblind, a colour-coded lab result may be unreadable, a painting muted and dull, a stoplight incomprehensible. It’s like walking through a blurry world without your glasses. Colour blindness changes the lives of those affected more than you might think.
Think you might be colour blind? Take a colour blind test here.
One segment of the colourblind population that is often under-supported and misunderstood is colourblind women. One in 200 women are colour vision deficient. This means that while people with normal colour vision see over one million shades of colour, these women see only about 10% of those hues and shades. Red green colour blindness (an umbrella category for deutan and protan colour blindness) is the most common, causing colour vision deficient people to see a less vibrant world. It also causes “colour confusion” at times.
This means that in school, for example, some of a person’s most formative years, colourblind people can run into unexpected and inexplicable difficulties. Because of a lack of testing, young women, more often than men, can go years without realizing that some difficulties they encounter in school are due to colour blindness. According to a recent survey of colourblind women by EnChroma, maker of cutting-edge colourblind glasses, colour blindness can have a negative impact on educational experiences. Nearly 25% (18 of 82) of female respondents did not learn they were colour blind until after the age of 15. The average respondent learned when she was 11 years old. “Even my colour blind relatives didn’t believe I was colour blind because I’m a girl and thought I just wanted attention, so I didn’t get diagnosed until high school,” says Piper Bodden, a museum curator. One woman did not learn she was colour blind until age 44. In the survey, 81% of women believe they endured extra struggles or delays before doctors, educators or their parents suspected and/or accepted that they were colourblind. Two-thirds were teased in school for being colour blind. Because colour blindness is relatively uncommon in women, nearly half say they face more challenges than colour vision deficient men.
The participant’s ability to identify and experience color in all its hues was demonstrated when they were not wearing EnChroma glasses, stating “these improvements persisted when tested without the filters, thereby demonstrating an adaptive visual response.
EnChroma user Harlee Sharp sees the full spectrum of color for the first time through EnChroma colour blind glasses.
These statistics point to issues that go well beyond colour blindness, but simple steps can and should be taken in our schools and workplaces to improve the lives of our colourblind women and men. EnChroma and EnChroma colour blind glasses are a small part of that effort. EnChroma’s cutting-edge colour blind corrective glasses combine the latest in colour perception, neuroscience and lens innovation to alter colour deficient vision. The EnChroma Colour Accesibilty Program brings colourblind glasses to museums, school districts, and state parks across the country so that more women and men, young and old, are able to explore the world in its intended colour and vibrancy. The National Institutes of Health, recent studies from France’s INSERM Stem Cell and Brain Research Institute and the University of California, Davis, as well as the thousands of colour blind women who’ve tried EnChroma glasses, agree that EnChroma glasses are the best colourblind glasses on the market today and the only glasses backed by science. If you’re a colour blind woman, or know of someone who is, try our glasses. You have 60 days to return them for a full refund if they don’t work for you so there is nothing to lose!
EnChroma earned the 2016 Tibbetts Award from the U.S. Small Business Administration in recognition of its innovative impact on the human experience through technology, and the 2020 Innovation Award in Life Sciences from the Bay Area’s East Bay Economic Development Alliance.
Photo of Emma Cornbower, CoFounder and Game Developer for Digital Strawberry LLC, wearing EnChroma glasses, courtesy of Emma Cornbower
