Know Someone Who is Color Blind? Give the Gift of Color This Holiday Season

    CHICAGO, IL, December 06, 2017 /24-7PressRelease/ -- An estimated 300 million people in the world have color vision deficiency, more commonly known as color blindness. Eight percent of men--one in 12--have some form of color blindness as well as one in 200 women. Wouldn't it be wonderful if you could give your loved ones or yourself the gift of being able to see colors? Remarkably, it's now possible, with Enchroma glasses.

Enchroma glasses are now available in Chicago at Doctors for Visual Freedom. Conveniently located inside of the John Hancock Center at 875 N. Michigan Ave., Suite 1550.

Dr. Mark Golden, an ophthalmologist at Doctors for Visual Freedom, explains that "most color-blind people are not blind to color, but have trouble seeing certain colors and hues. Normal color vision is based on light entering the eye, and activating three photopigments sensitive to different parts of the visible spectrum (blue, green and red). In a normal eye, the green and red photopigments overlap. For the color blind, this overlap is more pronounced, causing distinct hues to become indistinguishable. The absorption of light by the three photopigments in the eye, in the correct ratios, is critical to color perception."

Enchroma created a special patent-pending optical technology, "multinotch" filtering, that removes small slices of light where the red and green cones overlap the most. This re-establishes a more accurate ratio of light entering the three photopigments so that color-blind people enjoy a more normal spectral response. The result is that color blind people experience enhanced color, improved ability to differentiate hues of colors, and better depth and detail perception.

Enchroma glasses for men, women and children are available at Doctors for Visual Freedom in prescription and nonprescription lenses. The glasses start at $349 and are available in lifestyle, sports and kid's frames.

Importantly, Enchroma glasses are not a cure for color blindness. Enchroma strives to ensure that consumers and the medical community understand that our glasses are not a cure, correction" or fix for color blindness. The glasses are effective for about four out of five red-green color-blind people and do not provide 100% color vision. Enchroma glasses enhance the vibrancy and saturation of certain colors and improve color discrimination, depth and detail perception. The user's typical experience is that it takes about 5-15 minutes for an effect to be perceived.

How the Enchroma glasses were developed
Enchroma Chief Scientist and co-founder Don McPherson, Ph.D., had no inkling that his love for playing Ultimate Frisbee would send him on a lifelong mission to help color blind people. Don was playing Ultimate Frisbee while wearing special glasses he had developed to protect the eyes of doctors from lasers during surgeries. He liked how the glasses enhanced colors. One of his teammates-who is color blind-asked to try on the glasses. The teammate marveled at all the colors he could see that he had never seen before.

Inspired to learn more about this phenomenon, Don began exploring why the glasses might help color blind people see colors better.

Co-founder Andy Schmeder, CEO, joined Don and developed sophisticated computer models that simulated wavelengths of light and color vision deficiency. With the support of three National Institutes of Health (NIH) SBIR grants, they conducted studies on the feasibility of correcting color vision deficiency, using the latest understandings of the genetic basis of CVD to create a sophisticated computer-based model of human color vision. After more than ten years of research and development, Enchroma was born in 2010 and developed patent-pending design methods to create special spectral filters to assist color vision in a wide variety of applications.

About Color Blindness
Color blindness is typically inherited genetically and carried recessively on the X chromosome. Approximately four out of five color blind people (80%) can be helped by Enchroma glasses. Many color-blind people find their occupational, sports or artistic pursuits limited by this condition. While color blindness is often considered a mild disability, studies estimate that two-thirds of people with CVD feel it's a handicap. To find out if Enchroma glasses can help them, color blind people can take Enchroma's color vision test at www.enchroma.com.

For media inquiries, please contact Cindy Kurman, Kurman Communications, Inc. at 312-651-9000 x 11. Follow Doctors for Visual Freedom on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/DoctorsForVisualFreedom/ or visit their website at https://markgoldenmd.com/index.html.

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