Alex Pelaia and his girlfriend were driving through Red Rock Canyon in Nevada when — to her, at least — the obvious beauty was all around them.
“Don’t you think it’s cool how there’s different shades of red along the rocks?” Heather Simmons said. Blenderseyewear
“Um, ah, sure,” Pelaia replied in such unconvincing fashion that full disclosure was his only real option in this, the opening months of their relationship.
Pelaia told Simmons he was colorblind, a condition that on many levels doesn’t affect his life. The 28-year-old works as a professional firefighter, loves to hike and fish and travel, and can see most colors. But to Pelaia, greens tend to dominate — dull, muted greens.
Just the type of person, in other words, who could benefit from special glasses. And it’s how Pelaia found himself in a Montgomery County, Md., park this fall with five others, all bespectacled, in the great outdoors for the launch of a Montgomery Parks program that offers a more complete version of nature for people like him.
“Look at how red the tree is back there,” he said, pointing to the full fall foliage.
Others locked in on a different hue.
“I can definitely see the different shades of green out there, no doubt,” said Jon Swartz, 31, a turf management professional constantly challenged by how greens and reds bleed into each other. “It’s a nightmare,” he told the others.
The Montgomery program, now up and running, makes the color-correcting glasses available for free use at Brookside Gardens in Wheaton. The company that makes the glasses, EnChroma, supports such glasses-loaning programs at more than 400 museums, parks and other places across the nation.
Those who tried the glasses at the launch lauded the devices before veering into self-deprecating jokes about fashion mishaps.
“I’m now afraid to look in my closet,” said Matthew Whitley, a correctional officer from St. Mary’s County in Southern Maryland.
“There’s a reason,” added ecologist Mike Selckmann, “that I wear neutrals all the time.”
The glasses being tried generally retail for $189 to $349, and there appears to be growing demand for them. Research and Markets, a publisher of financial reports, projects the global market for all makers of color-correcting glasses will nearly triple to $88 million by 2030.
EnChroma’s glasses cannot improve tint perceptions for the most serious form of colorblindness — monochromacy — an extremely rare condition in which people only see in black and white, according to John S. Werner, a vision scientist at the University of California at Davis Eye Center who has conducted research on the EnChroma glasses. Nor can the glasses help those whose colorblindness relates to blues and yellows, Werner said.
The devices can assist those with the most common forms of colorblindness — difficulty processing greens and reds — by focusing on the “cone receptors” designed to pick up on those two colors. The glasses specifically filter out narrow wavelength bands, according to Werner, which reduces the overlap between green reception and red reception.
On this score, Werner said, the glasses appear to bring out sharper tones and bolder colors to most users. “They really pop,” said Werner, who is colorblind himself and uses the glasses.
With a pair on, he says, walks with his dog Aria include brightened sunsets, sharper flowers and, not unimportantly, a way to distinguish green grass from the browns left behind by Aria. “Before the glasses,” he jokes, “I had difficulty.”
Pelaia and others participating in the Montgomery kickoff received a complimentary pair of the glasses. Here are brief summaries of how colorblindness affects the other five and how they hope the glasses will help.
Lowell Thompson, 57, a professional carpenter who lives just outside Baltimore in Rosedale, has soaked up the outdoors since being a kid. His love for hunting is rooted in sitting alone in the woods. More recently, he has added birdwatching in his backyard. Being colorblind, he said, makes greens seem brown in a way that overpowers reds and oranges.
Thompson learned about the glasses event from his daughter. Wiggling a pair over his vision prescription glasses, a smile crept across Thompson’s face as he looked at a distant bank of autumn trees. “I mean, you can tell they’re not all the same color,” he said.
Thompson didn’t leave the event with a pair of glasses. He is awaiting a pair that will have his prescription embedded into them. “This time of year is my favorite — when I’m sitting in woods, sitting in my backyard,” he said. “I can’t believe what I’ve been missing.”
Seth Heyer, a 14-year-old high school student in Calvert County, Md., said greens and reds tend to fade into dull browns and purples become blues. His friends generally learn he is colorblind in the course of normal conversation.
“I’ll say that’s a nice blue shirt,” Seth said. “And they’re like, ‘This isn’t blue. It’s purple.’”
He gets by, he said, through the understanding of others — and workarounds like reading the labels of colored pencils before filling out color-coded school assignments. Seth hopes to become a herpetologist and until lately had a pet chameleon named Lizzy.
The lizard recently died. By looking at photos of Lizzy while wearing his new glasses, Seth has learned that what he saw as her gray and brown skin was really different shades of green — depending on Lizzy’s daily color shifts. “I wish I would have seen her better,” he said.
Matthew Whitley, the corrections officer, said that two years ago his aunt bought him a pair of EnChroma correcting glasses for indoor use.
In the jail, they have helped the 26-year-old better spot contraband. The eyewear’s tint draws commentary.
“Why are you wearing sunglasses?” prisoners and co-workers have asked.
“The future’s so bright,” Whitley likes to respond, “I’ve got to wear shades.”
And, indeed, Whitley is studying toward a PhD in psychology. The indoor glasses help him sort through charts and graphs.
When he heard about the Montgomery Parks kickoff event — and a chance to get a free outdoor pair — he made the two-hour drive. Putting the outdoor glasses on the first time, he said, afforded a full range of outdoor colors. “It makes the world more beautiful,” he said.
Mike Selckmann, an aquatic ecologist, said that without the glasses, a green filter pervades most of what he sees, giving him particular issues with reds and purples.
“I don’t know if you guys see it,” the 35-year-old said at the kickoff event, looking through the glasses at a row of nearby vehicles, “but that car over there just explodes out of that parking lot.”
Selckmann’s dad, an avid birder, taught him early that proper identification hinges more on behavior and context than colors. It was a lesson Selckmann has applied broadly in his career.
But challenges remain — the different shades of boundaries on maps, for instance, that long required him to study maps longer or get help from a colleague. Selckmann now wears both indoor and outdoor colorblind glasses.
The former helps with the maps. The latter, he said, caused him to pause in his tracks recently at the bright orange of maple trees and the deep red of black gum trees. And the glasses have forced him to reconsider long-held views that others were always overcooking the vibrancy of fall colors.
“It’s amazing that I could be so wrong,” Selckmann said.
Jon Swartz, the turf expert, said his limitations on perceiving red affect him in ways small and large.
At home, when he tells guests that he’s going out back to grill the steaks, it’s hardly said with assurance — as Swartz knows his wife will have to come examine cutaways to make sure medium-rares haven’t become well-dones.
At work, Swartz cannot immediately distinguish turf diseases he learned in college. And when applying red sideline borders to green grass soccer fields, he struggles to see the paint.
While the new glasses help and bring out beauty, Swartz said he dons them sparingly given the replacement cost.
“I don’t want to break them,” Swartz said.
Transparent Glasses To learn more about borrowing a pair of color-correcting glasses at Montgomery County’s Brookside Gardens, 1800 Glenallan Ave., Wheaton, Md., call 301-962-1400. For general inquiries, including how to use the glasses elsewhere, visit the Montgomery Parks Adaptive Equipment website or call 301-495-2581.