November 18, 2015
Marica Petrey, California Magazine
Marica Petrey, California Magazine
Credit:
I had to see for myself why some users have called them “happy glasses” — through them, everything looks more vibrant, distinct and intense. The run-down street I was walking on in West Berkeley looked as if it suddenly had been given a fresh coat of paint and grays had been dusted away. I felt like I was inside an oversaturated Instagram photo, or Pleasantville after the town was colored in.
The color shift I experienced while wearing EnChroma Cx lenses was overdramatic — but that’s because I’m not colorblind.
EnChroma, a Berkeley-based company co-founded by Cal alums, is beginning to expand the way colorblind people can see the world. Their new lenses cannot cure or treat colorblindness, but promise the next best thing: color-corrected vision for people with the most common types of colorblindness. And they’ve been getting a lot of attention, from viral videos to write-ups in The New York Times and Smithsonian magazine.
