UCC and EnChroma Team up to Help Colour Blind Students Address Challenges to Learning on Campus

– Students and staff will have access to special EnChroma colour blind glasses and guidance on adapting learning materials to support accessibility and inclusion for all –

EnChroma – creators of glasses for colour blindness – and UCC have announced that special EnChroma glasses for colour blindness will be available for staff and students who are Colour Vision Deficient (CVD) to borrow from the Boole Library to help them better navigate schoolwork that utilizes colours. In addition, staff will receive guidance on adapting learning materials to accommodate those who are colour blind. These will be launched next Wednesday 6th September, which is also international colour blind awareness day.

One in 12 men (8%) and one in 200 women (.5%) are colour blind – 13 million in the US, 30 million in Europe, and 350 million worldwide. With a student population of 24,000 at UCC that means that roughly 1000 students would be expected to have some form of colour vision deficiency. If you’d like to find out if you have a form of colour blindness, you can take a test here: https://enchroma.com/pages/test

For people with CVD, understanding colourful information in school, at work, and in daily life can cause obstacles. While people with normal colour vision see over one million shades of colour, the colour blind only see an estimated 10% of hues and shades. Common colour confusions include green and yellow, grey and pink, purple and blue, and red and brown, with colours appearing muted and dull and hard to tell apart. This can lead to frustration, confusion and other issues for colour blind students, let alone sports fans trying to watch Cork City vs. Sligo Rovers (or Ireland vs. Wales, or Cork vs. Limerick, depending on your sport of choice!)

EnChroma glasses are engineered with special optical filters that help the colour blind see an expanded range of colours more vibrantly, clearly and distinctly to make schoolwork that involves colour, colourful exhibits, attractions and/or experiences more accessible to the CVD.

UCC is joining numerous other renowned universities who also plan to offer EnChroma glasses to colour blind students to borrow as part of the EnChroma Colour Accessibility Program for Education. They include the University of California at Davis, Boston University, North Carolina State University, Alfred University, Francis Marion University.

Media: Product shots, images and interactive GIFs illustrating the challenges to learning for those with color vision deficiencies can be downloaded here.

About EnChroma

Based in Berkeley, Calif., EnChroma produces leading-edge eyewear for color blindness and low vision, and other solutions for color vision, sold online and through Authorized Retailers worldwide. Invented in 2010, EnChroma’s patented eyewear combines the latest in color perception, neuroscience and lens innovation to improve the lives of people with color vision deficiency around the world. EnChroma received an SBIR grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). It earned the 2016 Tibbetts Award from the U.S. Small Business Administration in recognition of the firm’s innovative impact on the human experience through technology, and the 2020 Innovation Award in Life Sciences from the Bay Area’s East Bay Economic Development Alliance. Visit enchroma.com to learn more.

Media Contacts:

Dr. Joel Walmsley
Department of Philosophy, University College Cork
P: 021.490.2566
j.walmsley@ucc.ie