Colour blind visitors to the Chau Chak Wing Museum, part of Sydney University, can experience exhibitions in vibrant colour for the first time, thanks to a partnership with EnChroma, creators of glasses for colour blindness.1 Museum guests who are red-green colour blind can borrow the special EnChroma glasses for use while at the Museum.
One in 12 men (8%) and one in 200 women (0.5%) are colour vision deficient; an estimated 350 million people worldwide. More than one million Australians are colour blind, as are over 3,500 of the 83,000 students and staff at the University of Sydney.
While people with normal colour vision see over one million shades of colour, those with colour vision deficiency only see an estimated 10% of hues and shades. As a result, colours can appear dull, indistinct, and difficult to discern.
“The mission of EnChroma is to enable those with colour vision deficiencies to access more of life’s colourful experiences through our specially engineered eyewear,” Erik Ritchie, CEO of EnChroma said.
“We are excited to collaborate with the University of Sydney’s Chau Chak Wing Museum to make its colourful works accessible to those with colour blindness. We encourage other museums, universities and public institutions in Australia to support accessibility as well.”
EnChroma’s patented lens technology is engineered with special optical filters that enable people with red-green colour blindness to see an expanded range of colours more vibrantly, clearly and distinctly. A study by the University of California, Davis, and France’s INSERM Stem Cell and Brain Research Institute, published in the scholarly journal Current Biology, demonstrated the effectiveness of EnChroma glasses.2
References
- sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2022/04/22/glasses-bring-colour-to-the-museum-.html
- ucdavis.edu/news/headlines/study-finds-that-special-filters-in-glasses-can-help-the-color-blind-see-colors-better/2020/07