New Contact Lens Can Correct Color Blindness

Unless you’re among the millions of people who are color blind, you’re fortunate enough to see the world in all its full-spectrum glory. Now many who suffer from the most common form of color blindness can look forward to literally seeing what they’ve been missing. Researchers have developed contact lenses that help to correct one form of color blindness, allowing those wearing them to view reds and greens more richly.

A Less Vivid World

In normal vision, the eyes use special cells called cones to perceive variations of red, green, and blue. In people who experience color blindness, some of these cones are missing. Depending on the types of cones affected, a person can have problems seeing reds and greens or blues, purples, and yellows. Very rarely, a person is deficient in both, leading to true color blindness.

The most common form of color blindness causes those affected to see reds or greens less vividly, or even not at all. Some forms are mild and disrupt color perception very little, while the most severe cases leave the person seeing black in place of red and yellow in place of most oranges and greens.

Correcting Color Blindness

Up until now, researchers have focused on special glasses that filtered light in a way that altered perceptions of color. Although effective, the glasses were expensive to make, bulky, and couldn’t be used in place of other corrective lenses. The new contact lenses contain a special dye that filters out certain color wavelengths, compensating for the color deficiency.

Tests have shown the dye in the lenses to be nontoxic to the eyes, even after being worn for 72 hours. Because the dye can be applied to any commercially available lenses, it can be used alongside other corrective prescriptions.

Color blindness may soon be a problem of the past for many. Further studies are currently being conducted, but color-corrective lenses appear to be a promising low-cost new treatment. And if you suffer from the less common purple-blue color blindness, don’t despair, studies are underway on contacts for you, too.