The Color Blind See Color for the First Time

Valspar Paint and ElChroma teamed up to help some of the 300 thousand people who are color blind experience seeing color for the first time.

Understanding something you can't experience is very difficult. Colorblindness. For me it's just a word. So people can't see the difference between blue & green. No big deal. Turns out it kind of is. Imagine having a child who colors a bunch of drawings. Now imagine not being able to see what your child has truly done.

I work with someone who is color blind. We'd make up charts and graphs and he'd come in and toss them down on the counter and ask "Are you kidding me with this? I'm color blind, remember." And we would be like "Oh crap, that's right. Sorry". It would be like tossing a can of beer to Stevie Wonder and yelling catch.

My father's color blind. He once told me about driving in Arizona where the traffic lights were horizontal instead of vertical. Kind of a big change when you've never actually seen a red or green light. Unless you've been told where the green light is, left side or right side, you don't know if you're running a red light or not.

Those are just a few examples, in case you're a unfeeling idiot like me, to help explain the emotion that these people feel when they put on the glasses that allow them to see color for the first time.