New Glasses Help Colorblind Men And Women See Colors

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- Imagine not being able to see the red in a stop sign.

Or the green in a traffic light.

Or the colors in a rainbow.

For people who are colorblind, their world looks vastly different.

Three hundred million people worldwide are colorblind.

It's mostly red and greens that they confuse.

But once they put on a new pair of glasses -- made by EnChroma -- their entire world changes.

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Arpad Sooky had no idea what he's been missing out on his whole life... a world filled with color...

"There's just so much color," Sooky said. "Honestly, I've never seen this much color. It's absolutely beautiful."

Sooky is colorblind -- a condition that affects 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women worldwide.

"I'll say, 'This is purple,' and people around me will say, 'No, that's not purple, this is black!'" says John Ricci, who is also colorblind.

But color confusion now has a solution with a pair of glasses made by EnChroma. The glasses help those who are colorblind see each color clearly. Reds look red. Greens look green. For the colorblind, those colors are often confused and can look brown.

Eyetique is the first eyeglass store in Pittsburgh to carry EnChroma glasses.

The store gathered Sooky, Ricci and Mark Eidemiller, who is also colorblind. The three men put on the glasses and in just minutes they were seeing like world like never before. For Eidemiller, he was truly seeing green for the very first time. In fact, he noticed his daughter's eyes were green. And the dress a woman was wearing was green, not gray.

With the glasses came color, but also clarity.

"The stop in the stop sign is crystal clear and sharp. But without [the glasses], it's a little bit blurry," says Ricci.

Sooky says he never wants to take the glasses off.

"I wanna keep wearing them," he said. "Just everywhere I look, there are colors I've never seen before. I never would have thought this was possible."

Eyetique is having a free event for folks who are colorblind and want to learn more about the glasses on Saturday, July 9. Click here for more information.