ENCHROMA

Glasses for colorblindness

Not sure if your clothes match in the morning?

Hard to tell when fruit is ripe by the color of their skin?

Do colored maps tend to blend together?

If you’ve said yes to any of the above questions, then you could be “color blind”!

While it’s commonly thought of as “color blind”, the more correct term is really color deficient, which means you have difficulty telling only certain colors apart.  Complete color blindness where the world is just one shade of gray, is actually very rare.

Color deficiency affects 8% of men and 1% of women, and can be genetic or acquired.  Genetic color deficiency means you are born with it, as this is typically the case for most males born with color issues.  Acquired color deficiency on the other hand, can be a loss of seeing color due to a diseases such as diabetes, multiple sclerosis, or cataracts.

There are three main categories of color deficiencies:

• Protan (Protanomaly/protanopia) – red weakness
• Deutan (Deuteranomaly/Deuteranopia) – green weakness
• Tritan (Tritanomaly/tritanopia)- blue-yellow weakness

Passing the color vision is required for the following professions:

1. Airline pilot
2. Air traffic controller
3. Firefighter
4. Police officer
5. Train driver
6. Some ranks in the armed forces
7. Some electrical/electronic engineers

At our office we offer the following color vision tests:

• Farnsworth D-15
• Ishihara test for Color Vision deficiency- 38 plate
• HRR Color Vision Test

EnChroma Glasses

EnChroma glasses will change the way you see the world!  With their patented light filtering lens technology, EnChroma glasses can help to make colors that you typically confuse seem more apparent. 

There are 2 types of EnChroma lenses:

• Outdoor– Enchroma sunglasses will help with color contrast when outdoors doing sports, driving, and being in nature.  They offer 100% UV protection.
• Indoor– Enchroma indoor lenses can be made with and without prescription and are helpful for school work, computer work, cooking, watching movies, and art projects.

Click here to learn more about enchroma glasses and to take a free online color vision test.

To schedule an appointment with one of our EnChroma trained opticians, call 714-486-3315.  

x-Chrom Contact:

The X-Chrom contact is a red tinted contact worn in one eye that significantly decrease color confusion.  Colors that usually cause confusion will stand out more with the aid of this contact lens!  This lens comes with prescription and can come in a soft or hard contact lens modality.  

If you are interested in the X-Chrom contact lens, call the office at 714-486-3315 to schedule a contact lens fitting with one of our doctors.  This lens must be prescribed by an optometrist.

*Please note: EnChroma glasses and X-Chrom contacts are absolutely not allowed when taking a required color vision test for certain professions.  Neither are they approved to be worn when performing a career that has a color vision requirement.