Colorblind man shares his journey into a vibrant world
Less than a day after Kyle Nakashima posted a video of his stepbrother at Balboa Park, a private Berkeley-based company zeroed in on it and asked his permission to use the story on its social media.
It captured Nolan Nitta’s reaction to the colorful world around him while wearing the company’s EnChroma glasses for the first time.
Nitta, who lives in Mira Mesa, was born with a type of colorblindness that affects his ability to see many hues, primarily green and red. One in 12 males and one in 200 females is born with color vision deficiency, including such well-known figures as Bill Clinton, Mark Zuckerberg, Tiger Woods, Rod Stewart and Britain’s Prince William.
While types and degrees of colorblindness vary, research indicates it leads to a person seeing only 1 to 10 percent of the more than 1 million shades of color viewed by those with normal vision.
This color challenge affects Nitta’s daily life in numerous ways.
At the grocery store, he has trouble picking fresh green vegetables and fruits, unable to tell by sight if they have gone bad. He can’t tell when his house plants are turning brown and need extra care.
As a quality control worker for a medical device company with colored charts, graphs or documents that have corrections in red ink, he often has to check with colleagues to make sure he gets it right. When driving, he relies more on the position of the traffic light illumination than on the actual red, green and yellow colors.
Nitta has loved to draw since childhood, but due to his colorblindness, he gravitated more toward creating black and white illustrations.
When Nitta was a young boy, his parents were repainting their home in Lodi and asked their son to select the color. Nitta chose what he thought was tan. He later learned it wasn’t.
While aware of the technological breakthrough that led to the manufacture of glasses capable of minimizing color vision deficiencies, Nitta had dis
missed them as too expensive.
So, as his 30th birthday approached in December, his stepbrother and friends pooled their money and surprised him with a gift certificate to order prescription EnChroma glasses online. Nitta could choose clear lenses, lenses that turn dark in the sun, or sunglasses. He chose sunglasses.
His stepbrother laid out two conditions. Nitta had to wait to try on the colorcorrective eyewear until he was with them, and he had to agree to let his stepbrother, Nakashima, take a video of his reaction to his first glimpse of the colorful world around him.
The grand reveal took place in mid-January outside the entrance of the San Diego Zoo, where the exotic greenery would provide a visual feast of colors.
“Wooooahhhhhhh,” Nitta said as he opened his
eyes. “I didn’t cry, but it was kind of emotionally overwhelming,” he said on the video. “I was taken by how beautiful the world actually is . ... It made all colors pop a little bit more. I ended up seeing a bunch of colors I don’t think I’ve actually ever seen before.”
During a recent interview,
Nitta said the glasses worked better than he expected. “I never really knew what I was missing until I saw it,” he added. “Before, I never really cared about color or the scenery around me. Now I appreciate it a lot more. The glasses made the whole spectrum more vibrant. Purples stood out a
lot more.”
“Something that was really life-changing for me was seeing the actual color of the ocean,” Nitta says. “I didn’t realize there was a green tinge to the water.”
The lens technology was developed beginning in 2005 by glass expert Don McPherson and UC Berkeleytrained
mathematician Andy Schmeder, who cofounded the company.
Early research was conducted in conjunction with clinical trials at UC Berkeley and UC Davis and with the help of a National Institutes of Health Small Business Innovation Research grant, says EnChroma spokesman Kent Streeb .A breakthrough came in 2014 with the switch from glass lenses to plastic polycarbonate lenses, a safer alternative.
In 2017, the lenses were offered by about 100 trained optometrists. That number since has quadrupled. The firm is now installing its color-corrective lenses in scenic viewers in parks and working with museums, school districts and libraries to make the glasses available to colorblind visitors and students, Streeb notes.
The company offers a test that can be taken online to determine someone’s level and type of colorblindness. Of the four types, their technology addresses the two most common, both involving the red-green spectrum, which affect about 98 percent of those with this genetic disorder.
The price starts at $229, a company spokeswoman says, but Nitta paid more than $400 for his online order.
Optometrist Keith Wan at Scripps Poway Eyecare has been carrying the glasses for four years. He describes it as a niche market. While Wan says he has about two patients a month requesting the technology, “They are happy with them. ... It’s an enhancement.”
Streeb says the glasses are more effective in natural outdoor light than indoors, where lighting type varies.
Nitta uses his sunglasses primarily on hikes and bike rides where he is out in nature.
He is “super excited” to return to his family’s home in Lodi to see the true color of his “tan” house. His brother says it is a light mint green.