TOLEDO, OH (WTOL) - The Toledo Museum of Art allowed a color blind father and his sons to see masterful works of art in their colorful glory for the very first time on Sunday.
It was all made possible through special glasses made by a company named EnChroma.
To the color blind, the world can appear gray, dull and some colors indistinguishable.
"For years, I thought peanut butter was green. It still looks green, but I know otherwise. I tend to stop at all blinking traffic lights at night because of red/yellow confusion. Also, when my wife recently picked out new towels for one of our bathrooms, I complimented her on the brown color choice, but the towels were grey."
The glasses are not a cure; they boost and improve color vision, but they do not correct it 100%.
For those who are color blind seeing colors that people with normal vision see can be very emotional.
"My sons and I are all excited about it. We don't know what to expect really because we've never seen these colors before, so it's sort of hard to anticipate what it's going to be. We're just looking forward to the experience," said Roger Grieve, an artist who has never even been able to fully see the colors in his own work.
Roger says he has always been color blind and the condition affects many of his choices.
"My choice of clothing has always been either very careful and safe or was chosen by others, with combinations listed and/or memorized. I built my first synthesizer from scratch in the 1970s, but could not read the resistor codes, so none of the circuits worked. I had my sister help me, but when it STILL did not work, we realized then that she was color blind as well."
Red-green color blindness affects 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women.
