I Saw Color for the First Time
and It Changed How I Perceive Everyday Life
Imagine your whole life, you perceive everyday information slightly differently than everyone around you. This altered perception isn’t something that often causes issue, it just exists as a slight annoyance. Annoyances like: You can’t throw your red frisbee in a green field without fear of losing it forever. You’re constantly pleading to game manufacturers that they include a ‘colorblind mode.’ You can only see the yellow and blue stripes in a rainbow.
Being color deficient isn’t something you’re born knowing. You’re told later after some revelatory event that there’s this entire range of the world that you’re missing out on. Every colorblind person I’ve met can tell you exactly how and when they found out they were colorblind. These stories are life changing events that often shape our perception of everyday life. And oftentimes being colorblind isn’t something that’s discussed because most of the time, it doesn’t matter. But after years of being sheltered away from a life of millions of colors, what would happen if someone flipped a switch that instantly allowed you to see them?
Being Diagnosed with Color Vision Deficiency
I found out I was color blind in the fourth grade, at nine years old. I remember the day quite vividly.
In Louisiana, all private schools are religiously affiliated, and I attended a small Catholic school in Breaux Bridge, LA from pre-kindergarten until 8th grade. Every Thursday, we would walk to affiliate church for mass. Ranging from small children to budding teenagers, you can imagine it was pretty difficult to get our entire school to focus for a solid hour of religious ceremony. So, in order to curb this preadolescent restlessness, my fourth grade teacher implemented a weekly mass quiz. This was a small tool to keep our attention focused on the priest and the readings. And on this quiz every week was the question, “What color was the priest wearing?” And every week that was the only question I got wrong.
My mom happened to work at that school as a kindergarten aide while I was growing up (she’s still working there today, actually). This was used by my teachers as a daily parent-teacher-conference and gossip session in their lounge. It meant I could never get away with anything. But it also meant that when my fourth grade teacher was growing more concerned about my weekly missed quiz question, she could pop over to my mom’s classroom and ask what was up. Because her brother also happens to be colorblind, my mom instantly realized at the time that I probably just couldn’t see what color the priest was wearing.
I believe I was around eleven or twelve years old when we finally went to an eye doctor and had it confirmed that I had color vision deficiency or CVD. My mom knew immediately on that day when I was in the fourth grade, but it was beneficial to at least get it checked out. I took an Ishihara test and was told that I failed around 75% of the exam.
How did I keep it secret for so long? Especially with a mother who already knew what color deficiency was? My shining moment was in kindergarten, when I learned how to read the crayons before we were taught to. Telling that story, people like to remark at how smart I was for ‘beating the system.’ I can tell you that looking back at being five years old, that’s not what I was trying to do. I just didn’t realize at the time that reading the crayons wasn’t the norm. I look at that story as an instance of the system failing to know that there was something wrong with my vision.
“What is it like to not see color?”
I get this question pretty often: “What’s it like?” or “What do you see?”
The simple answer? I don’t know.
I can’t answer that question accurately. No color deficient person has a proper gauge of what people with normal vision see. I, for example, study as much color theory as I can possible get my hands on. But that doesn’t mean that I can see what you see. It only means that I understand how you’re supposed to see. And if I don’t have a proper way of comparing my vision against yours, then I can’t accurately verbalize the differences between the two.
The best I can do show you a color deficiency simulator, and let you answer the question for yourself. Being a moderate Deutan designer, I use a couple of different simulators to make sure I’m doing my job properly. If you’re interested, I’ve had success in the past with Color Oracle and recently switched to Sim Daltonism for a wider range of results.
The most important thing to remember while talking to someone who is color deficient is that we are all affected by it differently. Color deficiency is cause by damaged or missing retinal cone cells. And because cone cell damage can vary in severity, the 8% of males and .5% of females who suffer from CVD vary slightly in what we see.
Enter Enchroma
Enchroma, Inc. was founded in 2010 by Don McPherson and Andrew Schmeder. The story goes that a friend of McPherson’s, who happened to be colorblind, tried on his lab glasses while playing a game of ultimate frisbee sometime in 2005. McPherson’s friend then noted that he could see the orange traffic cones against the green grass for the first time. McPherson and colleagues then went on to capitalize on this discovery and by 2012 were selling glasses that allowed the color deficient to see color properly.
In 2012, when their first pair of glasses launched, I was a high school senior drooling over the idea of seeing color for the first time. I would lurk Reddit and other forums who were sharing their reactions to trying on the glasses. As much as I wanted to get my hands on a pair, I couldn’t cough up the money for the $600 price tag. I distinctly remember seeing an advertisement by Enchroma on Reddit looking for testers of their new technology and being excited about the possibility of owning a pair. I also recall being disqualified because teenage testers in Louisiana didn’t quite fit the demographic they were after.
Putting on the Glasses
Fast forward to 2016, I’m working as a designer living out my dream in Silicon Valley. After two months of working with with my manager, I finally let slip something about thinking a green button was grey. Even though he didn’t see it as a big deal, I used this as an opportunity to present to my company that I was color deficient and how that impacted my design decisions. I’d say it was taken well by the whole company. It was taken so well in fact, that instead of treating me as I had done something wrong, my manager secretly put together a GoFundMe titled Help Mac see colors! to help me purchase the glasses.
The GoFundMe was revealed to me, already fully funded by everyone in my company, as a Christmas gift. I can sincerely say that this is the nicest thing anyone has done for me, and something I could never have expected or asked for. Even to this day, I don’t know how to repay them for this kindness.
So, after an eye appointment, waiting a bit for the glasses, and then having the glasses held hostage until everyone at work could watch me put them on, the big reveal took place. You can check it out here, but I’ll warn you now that I seriously suck at showing my excitement: Mac Cormier on Twitter: “The big @enchroma reveal https://t.co/w9Xt44jccN”.
Time to Confess My Greatest Fears
I am extremely grateful for what my coworkers did for me. I will be forever indebted to them for giving me the gift of color. But I can also admit that had it not been for them giving me the money with the distinct purpose of purchasing the Enchroma glasses, I never would have voluntarily purchased a pair.
To be completely honest, I was afraid of them. Two crucial fears rose up every time I considered obtaining a pair.
What would happen if they didn’t work?
I don’t care who you are, $600 is a lot of money to spend on a single pair of glasses. And when there is a distinct possibility that they may not work properly for you, how do you press that ‘checkout’ button? My uncle lives in Berkeley, conveniently where the glasses are manufactured, and was able to try on a pair from a friend. His results were less than satisfactory. What if the same were to happen to me? The fear was only amplified after my coworkers pooled together the money to purchase them as a gift, because now it wasn’t me gambling my own money away.
I’m a designer who stares at a screen all day.
A lot of what I do involves color. The glasses I was looking at getting were outdoor sunglasses, as Enchroma advertises that these have the highest chance of success with someone in my range of color deficiency. What that also means is that they don’t work on computer screens. One of my friends convinced me that I needed the outdoor glasses by saying that nothing on a screen can compare to seeing a beautiful sunset in real life.
But what would happen if the glasses did actually work? Would I experience the world around me in all of its true beauty, and then become bitter at the bland palette that I stare at for ten hours a day on my computer screen? Would I begin to hate design, my dream job and the thing I love, because I now fully understand that I can’t see the colors on the screen properly?
How I Now Perceive the World around Me
I’m happy to report that my two biggest fears didn’t come true. I mean, the glasses did work beautifully, but I don’t hate my job. I can now actually appreciate certain color choices by others now that I know what those colors represent in real life.
But a couple of things certainly did happen. My view of the world around me has been severely altered. When people discuss life changing events that shift their world views, I can definitely say that this was one of mine. So here are the two biggest impacts:
The world is fucking beautiful.
A more eloquent way of saying that truly does not exist.
I’m not a very emotionally expressive person, but I cried when I watched my first sunset with these glasses on. I am in absolute awe of everyday flower beds and typical hiking trails. Common differentiators used to not exist for me, things like a stop sign against a green bush or a traffic cone on a busy highway. Now imagine applying that principle to nature.
I think I’m also in a pretty good position now to note that most of us take everyday beauty for granted. There’s an orange tree that I park near literately every evening. The first time I looked at it with those glasses on, I stood staring for a solid five minutes without moving. I had to convince myself to not send a picture to my friend because I realized that seeing colors like that is a daily occurrence for her.
Moss that grows on rocks. Freshly painted lane dividers on a road. Streaks of red dirt on a green hill. The world around us is astonishingly vibrant, and I wish I could begin to describe to you how beautiful these very normal, seemingly boring things are after not seeing them properly for 22 years.
My mind also tells me that what I’m seeing is fake.
I’m still unsure of how to process what I’m looking at while wearing the glasses. Theoretically, I’m seeing colors closer to how someone with normal vision sees them. But if your whole life you saw the world as dull and boring without realizing it, and suddenly someone unlocked the vibrance of everything around you, how would you take that in? Not well, apparently.
The interesting thing now is the inability to differentiate what’s real and what’s ‘simulated.’ Conceptually, I understand that the colors around me are being enhanced so that I better understand how they are supposed to look. But in practice, no one can prepare you for the shift that happens every time you put the glasses on. In other words, I know it’s fake. Like putting on virtual reality goggles or watching a movie in 3d, something there isn’t right.
Here’s the best way I can try to describe it: when you’re playing an intense game or watching an intriguing film, you’re fully immersed in the story and are trying to soak in as much of the information as you possibly can. This world becomes real, and the lines between reality and the borders of screen become blurred, if not only for a moment. But the whole time, your mind is telling you deep down that this isn’t reality. You can always take a step back out of the environment and understand that what you’ve just immersed yourself in wasn’t true.
Now, imagine that for 22 years, you perceived the world around you in this one color palette, and you know that to be truth. The colors are dull. Sunsets aren’t beautiful. Flowers aren’t brightly colored. And when you finally put on a filter to see the world how it was meant to be seen, your mind is telling you the whole time that it isn’t real. That the colors on that orange tree you’re looking at are beautiful right now, but that isn’t how the world really looks. That the minute you take these glasses off, you’ll be back in reality.
Coupled with the awe inspiring beauty of new hues and experiences, I’m stuck trying to convince myself that what I’m looking at really exists. And I can tell you that that’s not one of the fears that I prepared myself for.
I will never regret putting on my Enchroma glasses for the first time, and will always be grateful to the amazing group of people who gifted me the ability to see color. To everyone at Pivotus, I cannot thank you enough. Seriously. I hope you understand how much you’ve changed my life.
The world around us is gorgeous. Please do not take that for granted. When you next walk your dog, don’t look at your phone. Look around. It doesn’t matter if you’re in the countryside or the city. The color around us is explosive and you owe it to yourself to take a minute to appreciate that.
Will it ever click in my mind that I’m now seeing the world closer to reality? I can’t answer that. But what I do know is something a long time friend recently told me: “Mac, you’ve always been kind of a cynical person. But once you put those glasses on you seem, I don’t know, happy.”
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I’m a designer, maker, and wannabe writer. You can wander over to http://maccormier.com to check out a little of my work or to just say hey.
