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Amazing technology allows the color blind to see a whole new world

Posted at 10:22 PM, May 10, 2017
and last updated 2017-05-11 15:32:47-04

The videos have gone viral. People who are red-green colorblind are seen trying on glasses and then, all of a sudden, they're able to see colors they've never seen before.

Jake Gutenberg remembers being in kindergarten, looking at drawings and realizing he didn't see the same as his classmates.

"They were like 'no everything looks dull boring and dead to me'. I was like, 'it looks normal to me..I don't know what's wrong with your guys' eyes, but my eyes are perfect'," says Jake.

He's 17 years old now and about to graduate from Stevenson High School in Sterling Heights. Being red-green color blind is all he's known.

Jake says, "Everything looks similar. Some colors will stand out like blue against red, but if you put green next to it, it's hard to tell the difference between them."

He says he's adapted well since it's all he's known, but when he started seeing those online videos, he wanted to try the glasses.

"I've been wanting to try it ever since. I wanna see what everyone else sees," he says.

We were there as Jake tried the Vino Optics red-green color blindness correction glasses. After 17 years of seeing the world one way, Jake felt like the glasses changed his view. He said the glasses make everything more vivid and bright.

"You can tell the contrast. Everything doesn't look like one straight color. Everything's now spread apart and different," he says.

Dr. Nitin Kumar is an opthalmologist with Henry Ford Health Systems. He says red-green color blindness is the most common form of color blindness - with about 5 percent of the population having the genetic condition.

"People who have trouble with their reds and their greens will see the color, but they don't see the color like somebody who does not have a color vision anomaly will see them," says Dr. Kumar.

Jake really noticed a difference when he went outside.

"The leaves are green, instead of brown and almost dead looking," he says.

For Jake's parents, this has made their world brighter, too.

"It's just an amazing feeling - knowing he can see what we see and see how vibrant colors are," says Jennifer Gutenberg.

Jake's dad, WIlliam, says "His wow moment was a wow moment for us, too. It was overly exciting to see what happened. It was awesome".

There are a variety of these kinds of glasses on the market, but they don't work for every kind of color deficiency.

To learn more about the Vino Optics glasses and prices, go to http://www.vino.vi/colorblindglasses.

If you'd like to see what it's like to be color blind, you can check out this simulator http://www.color-blindness.com/coblis-color-blindness-simulator/